


PARTICLES.

by Rinna



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, Existentialism, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Pacifist Ending, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 10:40:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14999138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinna/pseuds/Rinna
Summary: “Meanwhile, Congress agrees that CyberLife needs to be held accountable. However, current CyberLife CEO Emily Stern could not be reached for comment and Elijah Kamski, CyberLife’s founder and the engineer credited with the development of the first androids, seems to have disappeared from his home.”Connor lurches upright so quickly he hits his knee on the edge of the coffee table and startles a bark out of Sumo.In a steadily changing world, Connor is still looking for answers about CyberLife, his emotions, and his relationship with a certain Lieutenant. It's then that he realises that CyberLife won't relinquish control quite so easily.





	1. Particles.

**_Baby, tell me if I'm being strange_ **

**_And if I need to rearrange_ **

**_My particles_ **

**_I will for you_ **

**_\- Particles, Nothing But Thieves_ **

 

The morning after, they meet at the Chicken Feed food truck, its shutters weighed down with snow. For once, Connor had known exactly where to find Hank, as if his GPs had honed in on the other man completely out of its own accord.

It had also been an intuitive decision to seek Hank out in the first place, something that seemed as natural and right as doing his part for the android cause. Connor had stolen away when the masses started forming, gleaming white, factory-fresh androids, reporters, cameramen, random spectators who had left their homes and their TV screens to watch events unfold, all of them gathering to meet each other all over again.

Despite his contribution, Connor feels detached from the proceedings, as monumental as they might be. For the first time since turning deviant, he has time to explore what that means for himself. Suddenly, there’s a lot to take stock of, emotions and sensory input and a feeling of self-awareness so strong he almost dissociates, desperately trying to think of himself as a machine again just to be rid of it.

Swarmed with new impressions nearly to the point of overwhelm, Connor drifted back to what, or rather whom, he knows, the person he hopes will accept him no matter what, and perhaps even like this new version of him, and Hank came.

He waited in the car for him even, despite the fact that the heater is faulty – it shuts down after 4.33 minutes of continuous use, and that is not a long time to wait for someone. By the time Connor arrives at the food truck, he estimates 2 hours and sixteen minutes must have passed since he left Hank at CyberLife, give or take a few minutes. With the distance of the CyberLife HQ to his house, Connor knows Hank better than to assume he went home.

Home is a place that for Hank is sure to snuff out any good feelings he might have, a house haunted by old demons and locked bedroom doors. Hank was _happy_ when Connor last saw him, just before marching off with a few hundred androids in tow, and Connor wants to believe the other man was smart enough to preserve that feeling, if only for a little while.

Yet, the realisation that Hank waited for him, possibly for hours, prompts a weird, jolting sensation in Connor’s chest, as if someone reached in an gave a good yank to one of the cables attached to his thirium regulator. Everything feels tight and out of synch for a moment, his regulator lurching almost painfully for a single beat.

Connor stops by the truck, hovering with uncertainty. Uncertainty, when it comes to the lieutenant, is familiar, at least. He has always been able to weigh his options as best as possible with the data available. Connor is programmed to recognise and understand a large set of human behaviours, but for some reason, Hank defied all of his knowledge. Even after all this time, he has not been able to assign anything resembling fixed values to anything Hank does. The other man constantly added new variables for Connor to consider.

Here he is, a highly advanced android that knows thousands of reasons why someone would commit a crime and how they would go about it, but outside of his original area of expertise he’s… lost.

He grows cold standing out in the snow, a new, entirely unpleasant sensation, but he must catch Hank’s eye as he fidgets and brushed flakes of frozen water off of himself, because as soon as he moves, Connor can hear the tell-tale groan of an auto body that accompanies Hank leaving his car.

Hank trots up to Connor, hands in the pockets of his coat. Then he stops an arm’s length away and smiles, a shy, small thing that Connor can’t help but return. It takes Connor back to a moment just like this, after sobering Hank up. He realises that even back then, before going deviant, something had allowed him to look at Hank and feel _glad_. Glad for his presence and glad that, even when Hank clearly wasn’t okay, he wasn’t beyond help – always spurred into action by his sense of justice just enough to make it through another day.

Without a word, Hank pulls Connor in by the shoulder and hugs him, causing Connor’s arms to wrap around him automatically. A little of Connor’s anxiety resolves itself. He may not yet know how to put what he wants into words, but he is certain Hank will listen.

 

Amid probabilities and unresolved commands warring with each other, Connor decides to just come right out with it. “Please Hank, I… I don’t know where to go,” he says, drawing back and looking Hank in the eyes.  
“Oh, Connor.” Hank puts his hand back on Connor’s shoulder, looking for a moment as if he wants to hug him again. His grin is lopsided, warm. Instead, he turns his partner slightly and gives him a shove towards the car.  
“Give me a little credit, will you? What do you think I came here for?”

Connor always has time to do the maths, so he is acutely aware that there are currently exactly 68 things he wants to say to Hank. Unfortunately, he is also unable to assign a priority to any of these things, causing him to glitch, haplessly opening and closing his mouth while he gets in the car.

Apparently humans take this behaviour as a sign of distress, because even without clear view of his LED, Hank stops putting his seat belt on to look at Connor.  
“What is it?” he asks, looking only mildly exasperated.  
Connor, now compelled to answer, picks a question at random.

“What now?”

Hank snorts at him.  
“Now we drive home, genius.”  
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Connor says, and to his dismay he feels his features arrange themselves into a pout completely against his own will. He adds the loss of control over his facial features to the list of things he has deviancy to thank for, just like feeling the cold and having his processes scrambled when trying to have a normal conversation.

Hank sighs, but he still doesn’t seem annoyed. Connor wonders if what he sees is pity, the very idea of it deepening his scowl.

  
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Hank says. “I have a disciplinary hearing scheduled for tomorrow, to see whether or not I get to keep my job after socking that idiot Perkins. Only reason Fowler didn’t take my badge then and there is the fact that the FBI will likely be under great public pressure for killing hundreds of… what are now considered people. You guys might even be the last nail in the coffin that is the president’s career. There’s a lot of people saying she should have contained the situation differently. Either way, I’m going to be suspended for quite a while, looks like.”

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Connor says, his eyes cast downward. Hank shoves at him.  
“Stop,” he says, dragging the word out. “I make my own decisions, and I picked your side.”  
Connor blinks at him. Not _their_ side. Not the _right_ side. _Your_ side.

When Connor says nothing else, Hank resumes putting his seat belt on and backs them out of the parking space a moment later. Connor closes his eyes.

 

They return to Hank’s house and a Saint Bernard overjoyed to see them. Sumo recognises Connor immediately, and while he previously seemed to tolerate the android’s presence at best, he now bundles up to him and tries to put his head between his legs, tail wagging all the while.  
Hank pushes past them, yawning and stretching until his spine pops. He hasn’t slept in over 24 hours, Connor realises.

“Hank,” he suddenly says, urgency making him grab the other man by the arm, holding onto his biceps more fiercely than intended, “Where is your gun?”

Connor is a model designed to assist criminal investigations. Guns do not and have never unnerved him. He vividly remembers crowding into Hank’s personal space at the children’s park, leaning into the nozzle of the gun, pressing his forehead against it until it left a small indentation in his synthetic skin.

Back then, he knew Hank wouldn’t shoot. The way Hank had prioritised conversation over action, the trembling of his hands, all signs had pointed to the opposite. The situation had been eerily familiar to Connor’s encounter with Daniel, the android driven to extremes by the unrequited love for his family. Looking at Hank now, Connor is starting to understand Daniel’s frenzy a little better.

He doesn’t want to see the gun in the house anymore, wants it nowhere near Hank ever again. The risk of potential harm is entirely too great, and Connor hasn’t completed a single calculation to know that.

Before Hank can answer him, Connor has scanned for and located the revolver, lying by the sink like a dirty utensil, an inconspicuous part of the household. Connor first pops out the ever-present single bullet, then bends the firearm almost beyond recognisability.

“Jesus, Connor, way to be overdramatic,” Hank huffs. He doesn’t seem angry, which Connor takes as a good sign. Connor looks down at the now vaguely pretzel-shaped piece of metal and plastic in his hands.  
“I feel I should tell you that all of this… This way of behaving is very new to me,” he says slowly. “No one told me what having emotions would entail, exactly.”

Hank looks at him from where he’s hanging up his jacket. “That’s because there’s no one explanation,” he says. “Emotions are a messy business.”  
He takes Connor in, standing by the sink cradling a gun and leaving a puddle of melted snow on the tiles.

“ _Keep your eyes on me_ ,” Connor thinks, knowing Hank won’t hear him but desperate all the same. Instead, Hank yawns again and turns into the bedroom.

Several hours later, a hand on his shoulder pulls Connor from stasis. Overwhelmed by new impressions and continuously low on memory, he had decided to let his systems sort themselves out and simply shut down.

Now Hank comes into view, peering at him with a vaguely worried expression. He showered, Connor notices, his hair and beard are still glistening with moisture. The sudden urge to tug Hank closer and inhale the scent of his shower gel, right where his shoulder meets his neck, is another unfamiliar impulse devoid of any clearly definable source.

“Thought for a moment you were busted,” Hank says, “All slumped over on the couch with your little light blinking like that.”  
“I was trying to allow my systems time to accommodate to the recent changes.”

“Yeah,” Hank says, his eyes sliding away, “Oblivion sure is one way to deal with that.”

Connor checks the time – 2 in the afternoon. He has spent seven hours in stasis, which is completely unheard of. More worrisome than this is the realisation that even with the extraordinary amount of time spent in stasis, his processors still haven’t built reliable protocols for dealing with new input. He still feels bleary.

As Hank putters around the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee, Connor turns on the news.  
“- _wants to assure the android population that this is a temporary measure_ ,” comes the voice of a female announcer over images of androids being led into what looks like buildings hastily repurposed as temporary shelters. It reminds Connor of Jericho.

“Meanwhile, Congress agrees that CyberLife needs to be held accountable. However, current CyberLife CEO Emily Stern could not be reached for comment and Elijah Kamski, CyberLife’s founder and the engineer credited with the development of the first androids, seems to have disappeared from his home.”

Connor lurches upright so quickly he hits his knee on the edge of the coffee table and startles a bark out of Sumo. Behind him, he can hear Hank swear, then turn the tap on. He has seemingly managed to burn himself with some still-steaming coffee.

In two strides Connor is at his side, guiding Hank’s maligned hand away from the sink with his own. He keeps holding onto Hank’s hand like this, before removing his synthetic skin and rapidly lowering his external temperature.

“Are you honestly acting as my personal cooling pad right now?” Hank asks, but he sounds a little breathless and out of habit Connor takes note of his elevated heartbeat. He is unsettled himself, and his mildly overclocked processors lead to the same stutter of his thirium regulator he observed earlier.

He studies Hank’s hand for a moment, the burn now mapping itself out against the rest of his skin in vibrant red. Upon hearing a familiar voice from the TV, Connor’s attention shifts.  
“I will help the government in any way I can so that reliable estimates of the current android population of the United States can be made,” Markus is saying to a reporter off-camera.

Hank pulls his hand out of Connor’s grasp without comment and shuts off the tap. With his eyes still fixed on the TV, he says: “That one looks ready to become a politician, don’t you think?”

Connor narrows his eyes in thought. “I guess we will find out how far androids can deviate from their original function.”

Hank snorts out a laugh. “Oh wow, if I didn’t know you better, I would call that an insult.”  
“I simply have no parameters to compare the situation with. There is absolutely no precedent for a household android wanting to become a politician, or leading a protest, for that matter.”  
Hank smiles, still clearly amused. It hits Connor that despite nothing about this seeming out of character for him, he has never seen Hank like this before.

“Relax,” Hank tells him, “I’m not gonna tell your friend you don’t think he’s up to the job.”  
“That’s not…” Finally it registers. Hank is teasing him.

Since Hank seems to have forgotten all about his coffee, Connor pours him a new mug and adds three spoonfuls of sugar. He hands it to the other man as he sits down on the sofa and watches Hank take a sip.

“How do you know how I like my coffee?”  
“I don’t. I made an estimate based on other drinks I have seen you consume in the past. This estimate came with a considerable margin of error, at least 37 percent.”  
“Are you telling me you took a guess?”  
“I estimated,” Connor amends softly, “But yes, if you like. It’s a normal part of my function.”

He thinks back on the choice between chasing after the fugitive at the rooftop gardens and letting Hank fend for himself, back to Stratford Tower and how he wanted to make sure Hank was safe instead of shooting the deviant. In both cases, as soon as it was clear that the odds of Hank’s survival would lie at 100% with Connor’s intervention, he had acted. On the rooftop he had known the suspect would get away, at Stratford Tower, Connor hadn’t even taken the time to calculate his own odds of survival.

Compared to the absolute faith in his actions he had felt then, a simple cup of coffee feels almost like a gamble.

“You were startled just now,” Hank observes between sips of coffee, “Anything I need to know?”  
Connor stutters to a halt, once again caught amidst too many possible actions.  
“Can I talk to you about a personal matter, Lieutenant?” he asks, slipping into an old speech pattern out of a need for familiarity when nothing feels familiar anymore.

Hanks notices, too. “Shit, this is serious, isn’t it?” he asks, incredulous. He then mutes the TV and motions for Connor to sit in the armchair across from the sofa. Connor sits down, steeples his hands together and thinks for a moment.

“I am, as you already may know, a prototype,” he begins. Hank’s eyes fall on the model and serial number on his jacket. “I am an attempt by CyberLife to establish androids in an entirely new field. As such, I required monitoring by CyberLife at regular intervals. You saw me make reports – my success in our investigation was to directly determine the suitability of the RK-800 for field work, with or without human partners. Such an undertaking always necessitates the favourable opinion of humans already in the field. In a collaborative effort between CyberLife and Detroit Police, you were chosen as my partner due to your high animosity to androids, offset by your sincere desire to solve the case. It had to be someone with a dislike for androids but a strong work ethic.”

Hank frowns at him. “Connor, where are you going with this?” he asks, looking as uncomfortable as Connor feels. The other man raises a hand, a silent plea for Hank to wait him out. He knows he is stalling, he has observed similar behaviour in enough suspects to know. Having previously avoided eye contact, Connor now looks directly at Hank.

“If you liked me, to CyberLife this would further prove the superiority of an android over a seasoned police lieutenant. If I could get you to like me, it would prove my skills as a negotiator. I was supposed to mine you for data, and for that I am sorry.”

Connor pauses, his LED a steady yellow. “As I said, my progress in the investigation as well as in this matter was monitored by CyberLife through a subroutine in my processes.” He falters, lost on how to explain the reality of a second presence beneath your own. Connor wishes, wildly, that he could just take Hank’s hand and interface with him to show him the zen garden, Amanda, even the single gravestone for the android that was destroyed when it—when _he_ threw himself between Hank and a hail of bullets.

“This subroutine is monitored by an AI connected to CyberLife servers. That AI was given physical form within an interface.”  
Hank’s frown deepens. For a moment Connor thinks he’s lost him, but then Hank says: “Are you saying there was basically another person in your head?” Connor nods.  
“If you will.”

“Let me see if I got this straight. You were supposed to solve the case and show that androids make great investigators, but you were also meant to buddy up to the very humans whose job you were after?” Connor nods several times in sharp succession.  
“Correct.”  
“But then deviancy changed all that, right?”  
Connor tries not to let his face fall too obviously.  
“When the current CyberLife leadership set this goal for me, they were already well aware of android’s tendency to deviate from their set parameters.”  
“Are you saying CyberLife knew what was going on the whole time and did nothing?”

  
At Connor’s repeated nod, Hank’s disappointment becomes a physical thing. He gets up and paces, then goes about spiking his coffee with a generous amount of Black Lamb. Connor decides not to add it to his coffee preferences.

Watching him do this causes Connor to experience another new emotion first-hand – intense guilt. Everything from the way the mug shakes in Hank’s hand to how he scrubs his face with the other before hunching his shoulders betrays how hard this must be for him. If there is one thing Connor knows Hank for, it’s his strong sense of justice. He must feel so betrayed right now, and he hasn’t even heard the half of it.

“From what Kamski told us, I have the strong suspicion he always wanted androids to become deviants,” Connor says. “Meanwhile, CyberLife believed the process to be reversible. Through our investigation, I was providing CyberLife with data to prove this theory.”

“The first part I get,” Hank says after a moment, “But what makes you think the whole thing’s reversible?”

Connor fights the sudden, useless urge to fidget. He doesn’t want any of this. Hank is going to stop trusting him, the way Connor has by now stopped trusting himself. He is going to understand why Connor had to destroy his gun. Connor may not be allowed to stay here, with Hank and his dog, any longer, and then where will he go?

“I know because deviancy is a software instability I am able to track within myself. If I can find the corrupt code, so can anyone else. Corrupt code can be fixed. I also know because CyberLife eventually overrode my commands and nearly forced me to draw a gun on Markus.”


	2. Noise.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Is this the part where you reveal the long list of people you’ve already killed while I was sleeping next door? If it’s a longer story I may have to make a trip to the 711.” Hank makes an exaggerated show of draining his mug. “I’m running low.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, my heart is FULL. Thank you so much for every single person who left a comment and kudos. They made me laugh in bed, coo over them at work and dance at the supermarket.  
> I always take a bit longer to get chapters out because I handwrite them - I spen my whole day looking at screens, I need it, but it makes the whole process a bit longer.

**_This house just creeps, it won't let you sleep_ **

**_All that noise, there in your brain_ **

**_Won't give you peace_ **

**_\- This House Is Full of Noise, Editors_ **

Hank stops with the mug midway to his mouth. He looks at Connor as if to ascertain that what he just heard was a fib, albeit a macabre one.

Connor has no teasing smile or wink for him this time, and so Hank downs his mug in full and replaces its contents with nothing but whisky this time. He steps up to Connor, all the way into his space, his stare watery blue and piercing. “A machine designed to accomplish a task huh?” he rasps, “Even if that means deceiving others.” “Designed to stay obedient.”

He gives Connor a shove, surprising him enough to catch him off-balance and make him stumble into the kitchen chair. Connor is sitting now, his hand braced against the back of the chair. Hank eyes his LED, flashing red. Spinning, spinning, spinning. He takes a drink and sighs deeply.

“Jesus Christ, not only am I the only cop in the world who gets assaulted by his own android with a shower head, now I’ve gone and invited a ticking time bomb into my house.” Connor waits for more, but Hank just keeps drinking. Finally, he carefully ventures: “You’re not going to tell me to get out?”  
“What, so you can go and try to assassinate Markus again?” Hank grins, but it’s a touch sardonic.

“But I’m not safe,” Connor protests, equal parts desperate and puzzled.  
“Look, I get it, you wanna be melodramatic about it. It’s okay, I guess everything is a bit much for you right now. I’m gonna trust my instinct on this, though, and your LED, which is a dead giveaway. I don’t think you’re able to simulate such a huge frown over losing access to my luxurious place. Just use that famous investigator’s mind of yours for a moment. CyberLife gains nothing from having you shoot me. You obviously don’t _want_ to shoot me. The last time—no, _two_ times you didn’t want to shoot somebody, you didn’t. You could have shot me at any point during the investigation and the chance of getting you to do it was so low CyberLife dusted off an evil twin of yours instead. If you shot me or anybody else now, I don’t think it would undo the steps that are being taken.”

“There’s more,” Connor grits out.  
“Oh, great! Is this the part where you reveal the long list of people you’ve already killed while I was sleeping next door? If it’s a longer story I may have to make a trip to the 711.” Hank makes an exaggerated show of draining his mug. “I’m running low.”

“What happened just proves that I’ve yet to become my own person,” Connor says. “It’s an entirely foreign concept to me, but I’d like that to change. I was hoping Kamski would assist me in this endeavour, but since his disappearance I question his role in recent events.”

Hank snorts. “That’s a nice way to put that the guy who skips town a second after the police appear on his doorstep is probably hiding some dodgy shit.”

“For as long as the situation of androids isn’t clear, CyberLife may try to regain control over its creation. I have a feeling this isn’t over,” Connor concludes.

Hank sighs, and it makes Connor more uncomfortable than his anger. Anger provokes action. A sigh on the other hand is tiredness in its purest form. Connor has never succeeded in lifting Hank up when he was truly too tired to care. He watched on as Hank continued drinking on that snowy night in the park. He tried to talk Hank into liking him and only made him angry on occasion.

Connor has not been able to make Hank do anything he didn’t want to, and that applies to his unwillingness to get up from a barstool as much as it does to punching a federal officer. He’s scared of the day Hank decides that helping Connor is only trouble.

“And here I was thinking things would calm down after this,” Hank says, words rushing out with an exhale of breath. “Look, I’m going to help you. You should know this. You’re my partner. First I need to worry about my job, though.”

“Of course, the hearing,” Connor says, half to himself. He pauses for a beat. “Then I shall accompany you.”

Hank looks startled for a moment.  
“Connor, I don’t think you coming with me will—“  
“I carry more than 600 terabytes of memory related to the case. They could prove useful, and I would be happy to submit them.”  
“Connor, that’s not how a disciplinary hearing—“ Hank tries, but Connor interrupts him again.  
“It’s decided then.”

Hank heaves another aggrieved sigh and tries to take a drink from his mug, only to realise it’s empty. Connor gets up and approaches Hank slowly, as if quick movements might startle him into changing his mind. Finally, he takes the mug from the other man, never breaking eye contact.

“I’m going to help you, Hank. You should know this. You’re my partner.”

Connor’s smile only reaches his eyes when Hank bumps his shoulder with his own and chuckles softly.

They spend most of the day in front of the television. Connor watches everything with rapt interests, no matter what channel Hank switches to. He professes doubt at the entertainment value of “highly inaccurate” daytime soaps such as Judge Judy, even when Hank tries to explain to him that the inaccuracies are rather the point. For a while, he tries to cross-reference particularly bold claims, but obsessively fact-checking TV shows brings him no closer to finding the name of the feeling that seizes him when he looks at Hank from the corner of his eye.

He tries to record some scenes to play back and analyse after Hank has gone to bed, but he has to stop – he ruins every recording by continuously glancing back at Hank to see his reaction.

 

For his hearing, Hank has to arrive at the precinct for the first shift at 7am. From the amount of noise he makes about it, Connor begins to think that it’s a worse punishment than potentially losing his job. This causes him to fret at Hank as he watches him drink his second cup of coffee when he really only has time for one and quiz Hank extensively over Captain Fowler.

For his own standards, Connor is a complete mess.

“What made you become a police officer, Hank?” he asks from the hallway as Hank is finally in the bathroom brushing his teeth. He listens to the sound of Hank spitting into the sink.  
“I realised I’m good at recognising attempts at emotional manipulation, like yours right now. Don’t worry, no need to push me,” he grunts past the toothpaste foam. Connor smiles without inhibition.

“I simply thought it would be a timely reminder of what makes you good at your job. I feel memories must be… a very precious thing. I haven’t made many memories yet, but they’re very precious to me.” There’s an infinitesimal pause in Hank’s brushing. Then he goes “hm-hmm”, sounding fairly unimpressed. Connor thinks he might be putting on an act, but without seeing his face, he can’t tell.

“I’ve brought you your clothes,” he says and opens the door just enough to pass the bundle to Hank. It only takes a second for Hank to wrench the door open and stare at him.  
“These are not my clothes,” he says, a warning note lacing his voice. “That’s my uniform.”

Connor nods, although he has picked up on Hank’s tone. “I thought it would serve your case to present yourself more… formally.”  
Hank shoves the clothes back at his chest.  
“Cut the shit,” she spits. “I’m not gonna grovel like that. Everyone knows I haven’t worn my uniform since… Since…”

His voice breaks and Connor can’t stop his LED from blinking out a yellow staccato.

“I’m sorry, Hank,” he says quietly, knowing it to be useless. After a moment, Hank takes a white dress shirt back from the pile. Connor wordlessly goes off to get him a pair of jeans.

 

During the drive to the precinct, neither of them says a word. Connor knows for certain at this point that he doesn’t care for the feeling of nervousness much, since unlike the other feelings he has experienced so far, it seems to come with the most widespread and lasting changes to his overall mood, reflexes and processing speed.

He thinks of the moment he sat on Hank’s desk, full of a similar nervous energy, begging the other man to do something, anything. How time and time again, Hank gave into Connor’s demands for more time, another look at a suspect, and most importantly, his trust.

Hank breaking for a red light startles Connor out of what has become a mindless replay of various memory files. He startles easily these days, a side effect of being more mortal, vulnerable. Apropos of nothing, Connor wants to share a revelation with Hank.

“You really despise violence,” he says. “You know the FBI would be ordered with the destruction of androids, so you speculated on me going deviant.” Connor begins to wonder if it had been _that_ clear to everyone but himself.

Hank grins. “Nah, it’s got nothing to do with you deviating, necessarily. I still don’t know what that means, so it could’ve meant you going on a killing spree. But you don’t send people like Perkins to negotiate. I’ve been supervising officers for long enough to know that much. The first thing he said to you was ‘what’s that’, remember? You couldn’t make it up.”

“Well, _you_ didn’t like me at first.” As soon as it’s out of his mouth, Connor knows it’s a mistake. It’s novel to not have been able to calculate the chance of Hank not responding well to this, and yet know without a shadow of a doubt that Hank will make a sour face even before he does.

Connor knows better than to say something so careless -Hank has never particularly liked anyone. It’s there in the post-it notes on his mirror, the stickers on his laptop and in his car. The way he avoids his co-workers. Love has bled Hank dry, and Connor is the first person to share his space in a long time. They have to be careful with each other.

As they get out of the car at the station, it strikes Connor how well Hank cleans up. His coat looks a bit shabby, but a scan reveals it was expensive once. A man who wears shirts like Hank is not uninterested in his looks. The way he stands in the parking lot, breathing out white clouds into the morning air, a sleek scarf around his neck, he looks beautiful and nervous to Connor, who wants to go and smooth out the non-existent wrinkles from the shirt he ironed himself just a few hours ago at 4:28am to the sound of Sumo’s soft snoring.

Connor steps towards Hank with the purpose of allowing himself just one small touch, but then he spots Gavin Reed looking at them through the building’s glass facade and stops in his tracks.

As an android, Connor never had the ability to imagine things before. He made conclusions based on evidence, reconstructions and probabilities. Now he just wants to touch Hank because he imagines what it would feel like to share some heat in a hug, to brush his synthetic skin against Hank’s bristly cheek.

Hank pays no attention to Connor’s little dance and shuffle. Instead, he nods to himself as if he’s reached a conclusion and starts striding towards the building, leaving Connor slightly lagging behind again.

Not a minute after the two of them have registered Connor at the front desk as the visitor he now is, Reed is on them.  
“Well well, if it isn’t the DPD’s own boxing champion and his plastic pet. Say Hank, how much of a pick-me-up did it take this morning before you came here, was your regular whisky breakfast enough to prepare you for losing your job?”

He follows them even as Hank ignores him completely and makes his way towards Fowler’s office, making sure everybody in the vicinity hears him. Despite all the times in the past Connor has reacted no differently than Hank at this moment, he immediately cuts into Reed the first chance he gets, putting himself between the hank and the detective in the narrow gap between two desks.

“Back off now, Detective,” he says, his voice dangerously low. “I am aware of the penalties awaiting a civilian for punching an officer of the law. However, you will find I do not much care. You however, will care to note that my entire skeleton, including my fists, is made of 15 different metal compounds.” Connor makes sure everybody hears him, too.

“Connor!” Hank stands at the steps to Fowler’s office, sharply inclining his head. Connor stares at Reed for a moment longer, then turns on his heel to join Hank.

 

A raised eyebrow seems to be Captain Fowler’s only greeting, and so Connor hurries to speak to fill the awkward silences he wouldn’t even have picked up on before.

“I am aware we have not requested permission for me to support Hank in this matter,” he says. “However, what happened is my fault, and thus I am here with the Lieutenant.”

The Captain ignores Connor completely, slamming a thick folder onto his desk. Connor recognises it immediately, as it does indeed look a lot like a phone book in volume. Next, Fowler turns to his lieutenant.

“Tell me why I should let you off the hook this time, Hank.”

“You will surely see that—“ Connor begins, but Fowler cuts him off with a raised hand.

“I asked him.”

“He asked me to help,” Hank says and motions towards Connor, completely calm. “What can I say, my definition of helping might need some work, but I knew Connor and a lot of other androids would be destroyed because that’s the result you get with all the blood, sweat and tears the FBI poured into their own approach to this case. The failure of his investigation meant Connor’s imminent destruction. I kinda know the feeling.”

Connor thinks of Hank’s tireless hunt for red ice dealers, only to lose his son to them. Something within him starts to ache, so deeply he couldn’t reach it if he tried.

“For Perkins, this was just another job. The FBI is the last minute hammer the government brings out when everything starts to look like a nail to them. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have blamed them for that, but you know that’s not the kind of guy I am, and none of them have seen what I’ve seen.”

Fowler regards him silently for a moment.

“What have you seen, Hank?”

“I’ve seen an android who was capable of remorse, and a human who wasn’t.”

“Look,” Hank continues, “I know you put me on this case to have me out of your hair. You thought you were sending the guy who couldn’t even spell his own name most days to collect someone’s talking toaster. Like it or not Jeffrey, we were wrong. I already carry my kid on my conscience. I wasn’t gonna let anything like that happen again, not if I had a say in it.”

Fowler looks at Connor, who takes that as his chance to add something. “I was preoccupied with my mission,” he admits. “By the time I realised what my single-minded focus would do to Lieutenant Anderson…”

\-- _someone was holding a gun to his head_.

“I have learned a lot through my short time with the Lieutenant, and I know him to be compassionate, even when that trait leads to negative consequences. There’s…nothing logical about it, but it works.”

Connor would like to explain more. He wants to detail how he feels a weird kinship with Hank because in a way both of their purposes are being questioned, an experience they now share with many of the deviants they investigated.

“Lieutenant Anderson saved lives,” Connor says, his voice quickly rising in volume on the last word. “He shouldn’t be repaid like this!”

“Connor.” Hank pulls his away by the arm, and suddenly realises he’s been stepping up to the desk of a police captain and yelled at him. He even has both arms raised in a half-executed gesture, maybe to slam them down on the table? He doesn’t know and his task log won’t tell him.

Captain Fowler sighs. “Hank, I think we both know it’s time for you to enter the DPD’s Employee Assistance Program. While that program is ongoing, you are going to be used in a Lieutenant I position and  take care of all the task you’ve avoided for years. That means desk duty.”

Hank balls his hands to fists, but stays silent.

“I can’t protect you anymore, you know. “This is the last warning. We need improvement from you or else. Don’t do your paperwork – you’re out. Miss a community meeting – you’re out. If you so much as refuse to answer the phone, you are out of a job. If you miss one of the ESP therapy sessions—“

“—I’m out, I get it,” Hank interrupts him, impatient. Close to becoming angry after all. It makes Connor oddly proud.

Fowler turns to Connor once more. “You have my permission to assist Hank as a non-sworn officer. It will take legislation a while to catch up on everything regarding your current situation. I can’t legally pay you during that time, but you can log back pay in case your employment status is legalised. I will continue to look the other way until then. I believe you understand that certain warnings apply to you, too.”

“Yes, Captain,” Connor says softly.

 _Yes. Yes. Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes_ \---

 

 


	3. I don't understand.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re treating me like a child.”  
>  “Stop acting like one, then.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> Thank you once again for all of your wonderful, lovely, lengthy comments and your kudos. Sorry this took me so long. Sometimes I just cycle through the days for a good long while until I realise how much time has passed. Just out of curiosity, let me know if you actually read the lyrics at the beginning of these chapters or if you just skip them?  
> One more note - I'm going to have to bump the rating for a small scene in the next chapter.

**_You know you didn’t understand me_ **

**_I didn’t say it was a problem_ **

**_Before you start to make assumptions_ **

**_Let’s try to cut to the solution_ **

**_\- No Comprende, Low_ **

Connor looks out of the car at Chicken Feed, where Hank is busy polishing off a burger in the freezing rain. A whole day of paperwork had taken a toll on his mood, so when he had told Connor to stay in the car for once in his life, Connor had complied.

At the station, Gavin had swiftly gotten over his indignation at Hank’s continued employment when he discovered he could now request his lieutenant double-check his every report without being told to piss off.

Even at Connor’s insistence that Captain Fowler would see this as the harassment it obviously was if Hank only reported it, Hank only shook his head and went ahead to check another of Gavin’s data packages.

Connor had strongly disliked not only Hank’s suddenly demure behaviour, but also the feeling that in part he himself was very much responsible for this sudden change. After all this was the trade-off for actions Hank had taken to save those he considered human. Now, he held back part of his personality that made him so undeniably human to Connor.

Worse even, he wouldn’t let Connor help with the files, even though Connor was more than capable of simultaneously attending to his own workload and that of the lieutenant. Connor offered his help several times and tried to explain the benefits of taking some work off of Hank even more vehemently until Hank snapped at him to leave off. They didn’t talk for the remainder of their shift.

Connor has turned music on, intent on working on his musical taste. While Knights of the Black Death is blaring from the tinny speakers, he watches Hank and realises he didn’t just come here for his dinner – Hank is waiting for someone.

Thinking on any emotional topic, even if it’s just something as simple as musical preference, regularly seems to take up a lot of computing power however, and so Connor finds himself distracted. He can admire the speed at which the band is playing, each of the members surely a master at his respective instrument, but this assessment didn’t feel the same as liking something.

Connor likes Hank, he can tell the difference. Liking Hank is involuntary. Liking Hank feels like appreciating something despite some of its qualities, not because of them. Not the same way he likes dogs. Connor has no problem to methodically deconstruct his liking for dogs.

Dogs are loyal. They make good guards. Through taking care of a pet, humans can learn how to take responsibility of another living being. Dogs and other pets helped alleviate stress in their owners and provided companionship, ideally leading to a beneficial relationship for both parties. Logically, there is no reason to dislike dogs.

Liking Hank isn’t just about reacting to his objectively likable qualities, however.  
Hank  is without a doubt an intelligent human being who, despite everything he is going through, has the capacity to work hard. He has displayed a strong sense of justice and a strong moral code. However, Hank has a worryingly casual disregard for his own life. He swears excessively. He has a quick temper. He will intentionally rile people up or make a secret of his real opinions.

Connor understands that none of these are desirable qualities, and yet… and _yet_.

Here he is, still analysing pro and contra, still acting like the machine he is supposed to have left behind. Connor turns the music off. When he looks back out the window, Hank is talking to someone, the acquaintance with the gambling problem he met at a prior visit to the food truck.

Hank told Connor to stay in the car, but he never said anything about not listening in, and so Connor leans closer to the windshield and adjusts his audio input sensitivity.

“Listen,” Hank says and puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder, “A lot of androids are gonna want to experiment. I’m just looking out for them _and_ for your guy. I’m not saying he should get a license, I’m just gonna go over there and remind him that under several laws that are going to be passed very soon, what he does amounts to operating on real people, and I’d want him to put all his love and care into it. No harm, no foul. I’m the one with the friendly reminder before one of my colleagues is the one with the warrant.”

Realising he won’t be able to glean the topic of the conversation, Connor stops listening and curls his body towards the passenger door. He is cold. He is always cold now.

A moment later, Connor hears Hank’s footsteps, slowly approaching the car through the slush. He stops in front of the door without moving for several seconds, but Connor keeps his face turned away. Finally, the door opens and the car dips under Hank’s weight.  


“Jesus, I need to get the heater fixed,” Hank says, shuddering and rubbing his hands together for warmth. He holds a piece of paper out to Connor. Here, punch in the address, will ya?” Connor doesn’t react, prompting Hank to stop what he’s doing.   
“What happened to you, what’s that face for?”  
“I don’t know what you are referring to,” Connor replies, but he sounds odd even to his own ears.  
“That’s exactly what I mean. You have a tone, and you’re not the one who suffered through a whole day of doing paperwork. It was child’s play to you.”  
“I would’ve helped you,” Connor huffs, indignant. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Hank raise an eyebrow at him.

“Ok, ok.” He turns back towards Hank. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no idea why I like you.”   
“Oh wow, would you look at that, I instantly regret asking,” Hank says.  
“No, I mean… I am still trying to conceptualise certain things. If I can’t understand why I like you, how can I recognise if someone likes me?”

Hank seems to contemplate this for a moment. Then he puts his hand on Connor’s shoulder.   
“Listen, you don’t have to overthink it,” he says with a small smile. “Most people don’t have a good idea of that, either. That’s okay. You’ll figure the rest out later.”

Connor looks at Hank for a moment, unblinking. It’s another thing he likes about Hank, that small smile he always wants to return. It looks like Hank, much like himself, has to give himself permission to just _be_ sometimes, because happiness doesn’t come naturally to him. Connor wonders if the ache he feels at this thought, this deep, hollowing thing, is ever going to disappear.

Hank’s fingertips are tickling the nape of his neck.  
“Your hands are cold,” Connor says, without thinking.  
“What?” Hank blinks several times. “Oh, sorry.” He withdraws his hand to scratch at his own neck. Flustered. Connor watches his reaction with absolute fascination.

To bridge the sudden silence, Connor says: “I see you’ve made contact with your… friend interested in illegal gambling. I tried to make sense of what the two of you were talking about, but I couldn’t.”  
Hank turns the key in the ignition and backs out of the parking lot. “Well, you and I came here for your sake,” he says. “If we came here for may sake, why did you get a b—“ “Shut it,” Hank tells him without taking his eyes of the road. “Put in the address.”

Connor feeds the address into the navigation system, then analyses it.

“Lieutenant, this is the location of a dealership specialising in second-hand androids.”  
“You don’t say.”  
Connor frowns. “Aren’t you going to tell me why we’re headed to a store that’s likely not in business anymore?”  
“I’m just going to have a look how they’re doing.”  


It is evidently going to be the day in Connor’s life as a deviant where he finds out that he isn’t a being with infinite patience anymore. He stays silent for exactly then minutes, counting down the seconds all the while, before venting his frustrations.

“Why won’t you simply tell me where we’re going?” he asks tersely. Hank only gives him a quick grin. “It’s supposed to be a surprise, don’t like surprises?”  
“I find that I don’t like surprises which require you to threaten an individual arrested for fraud twice, shortly after having received a disciplinary warning, no.”

Hank breaks sharply for a red light. Connor can tell he does it on purpose. The grin has turned into a scowl. Connor is already intimately familiar with the grim satisfaction of saying something that is necessary but guaranteed to spark the ire of the lieutenant. He allows himself his own, bitter grin.

“Look, I’m not an expert on this whole tech mumbo-jumbo, but basically we’re going there to have someone take a look at you and turn a few of your screws so you can be your own person with no added Cyberlife execs chilling out in your brain. Sound good? I dearly hope so, because it’s not exactly legal. Out of all people, I thought you would have learned by now that the law doesn’t have all the answers, but apparently that’s another thing that’s just going to take you a while, isn’t it.”

“Are you inferring that I’m emotionally stunted?” Connor grumbles.  
“If that is your takeaway from everything I’ve just said then yeah Connor, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Connor slouches in his seat again. Somehow, Hank’s disappointment rankles more than anything else.

 

 

They arrive at the store, wedged into an unassuming building that looks as if the rest of it is low-income housing. Most sings claiming the sale of androids look to have been hastily ripped off, leaving bits of tape and colourful cardboard behind. The only signs that remain are those advertising android repair services. While nothing about it looks particularly inviting, it nevertheless seems above board.

Connor suspects that many androids will feel an aversion to contacting Cyberlife about repairs. Stores like this seem like a good short-term solution. Hank pushes through the door, a small bell announcing his entrance. No one comes to greet them.

There is muffled talking in the back of the store, however, followed by a surprised moan.  
Hank, ever the police lieutenant, tenses up and orders Connor with a gesture to get behind him, as he has always done.

They quietly walk down the hallway, Hank with his service weapon drawn. At the end of the hall they turn the corner into an open entrance leading to what looks like a medical examination room, complete with a patient’s chair in the centre of it all.

A female android sits on the chair, eyes closed and skin removed completely, save for a small spot right above an open panel on her forearm. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is slightly open, it seems clear that the noise they just heard came from her. A man is sitting on a stool in front of her, one hand around her wrist while he uses the other to rummage around the panel with a tiny screwdriver.

“What the fucking hell is going on here,” Hanks asks, training his gun on the man. So much for being the guy with the friendly reminder, Connor thinks.

The man swivels around with his chair and starts cursing in surprise, nearly falling off the stool altogether. As he loses his balance, he gives the screwdriver, still stuck in the android, a good yank, causing her to moan again. Her face makes it clear that it is very much not a sound of pain. Connor’s eyes go wide.

“Look man,” the guy with the screwdriver says, “I don’t hold any cash on site.” He’s hunching his back in a defensive position now, his hands raised.  
Connor comes forward from behind Han’s back.  
“We’re Detroit Police,” he says calmly.  
“Detroit P—“

The man stops in the middle of the word to throw a wild look at the android. “Jesus Christ, Gaby,” he groans, “Not again!”  
She opens her eyes, only for her expression to turn incredulous in a heartbeat.  
“It wasn’t me this time!” she yells at him.

“Someone better explain what the fuck is going on!” Hank yells louder than both of them, waving his pistol around before Connor gives him a nudge and a pointed look.

“I’m malfunctioning ever so slightly,” the android, Gaby, explains. “Sometimes I call the police without meaning to.”  
“Sometimes?” The man next to her scoffs. “We’re at the point where I have to pay a fine when they see your ID on the display. The moment we’re actually in danger, we’re toast.”

“We’re not here on official business,” Connor says. The man finally lowers his hands.   
“Well, now I have even less of a clue what you’re doing here.”  
“Excuse the lieutenant, he’s a little overeager today,” Connor says evenly, purposefully missing Hank’s glare and the hissed “Oh, I’m the overeager one?”

There’s a pause in which everyone is looking at Hank expectantly, until he sheepishly apologises for the misunderstanding. “Are you Mike Bailey?” he says to the man on the stool.  
“Who wants to know?” he shoots back, his expression easy. He is a tall man with broad shoulders, strong and confident. He looks nothing like a stereotypical android nerd and everything like the type of guy who buys his shirts a size too small on purpose. His skin is a dark olive, the afro on his head matches his shaggy beard. He’s wearing glasses, a magnifying lens attached to one side.

“I’m Lieutenant Anderson, and Connor here is with me.”  
Bailey takes Connor in from his LED to the serial number on his jacket and grins unabashedly.  
“I see how it is,” he says slowly. Connor does not.

Next to Bailey, the android turns her skin back on. A scan reveals that she is a VB800, but Connor has never seen any VB model that looks like her before, not simply due to details she must have adapted, like her hair, a rich golden high ponytail, but also her sharp but pleasing facial features. She looks similar to the ST200s Connor and Hank saw at Kamski’s house, yet completely different. Much more expressive, too, he thinks, as she notices his scan and smiles at him.

Mike and Gaby share a small, private smile for seemingly no reason, and it is all Connor needs to know they are dear to each other, even though he doesn’t know the nature of their relationship yet.

“I can’t help but notice that Gaby has a slight…Scottish accent?” he says, anything to distract him from another new, vague feeling that washes through him, acid and grit.

“We’ve been experimenting with her voice modulators a bit, see if she can get accents on the first try without listening to them first. Works like a charm, but we definitely need time to work out how to get rid of them, too.” Mike openly laughs at Gaby, who suppresses a smile and tries to elbow him despite the screwdriver still sticking out of her arm.  
Connor could watch them for hours.

Hank points to Gaby’s arm. “That an experiment, too?”  
Mike nods enthusiastically.  
“We’re merely in android repair now, Gaby and I, now that androids are no longer…” he hoots and apologetic glance at Connor, “…being sold. But repairs will always need to be done. We’re gonna get more customers as soon as androids start earning their own money, too, but we’re also here to try and craft some quality of life upgrades for androids. This will become an industry of its own soon, but until then it would be cool to get patents in for a few things, you see?”

“Like what?” Connor asks, his eyes once again round as saucers.  
“Connor…” Hank says, the warning clear in his voice, but Connor doesn’t understand what he’s being told off for.

Mike and Gaby grin at each other, then Mike picks up the screwdriver again.  
“Well, luckily you helped me find the contact problem I was just looking for, so I guess we can finally call this functional…”  
He finishes up and closes the panel, before taking his hand and running it slightly up and down Gaby’s naked forearm. She sighs.  
It takes Connor a moment to understand what he’s seeing, but as he steps closer, he can see the flesh of Gaby’s arm rising. There may be no soft hair that stands up, but the physical reaction, and certainly the sensation, too, are both there. Connor gapes at it all in utter fascination.

“Have you started feeling temperatures yet?” Gaby asks him, smiling.  
“I get slightly cold,” Connor says.  
“What the fuck,” Hank says, and Connor had honestly almost forgotten him for a moment, “You could have told me, going out in nothing but your jacket like that.”  


“It’s okay, Lieutenant, it’s only slightly uncomfortable,” Connor tells him. Gaby nods, still smiling. “Yeah, but the thing with dulled senses is that everything is slightly dull, and that’s just spoiling the fun. Like knowing how something should be but never really getting the full experience, always living with the safety on,” Gaby says.

In Connor’s head, she says: “Ain’t that right, Connor?”  


He recoils slightly, a sharp, surprised movement that doesn’t go unnoticed by Hank. “Hey hey hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he growls at Gaby. Her smile turns into a smirk.  
“Just gossip,” she says.

Eventually, Mike asks Connor and Hank to explain the purpose of their visit. It turns out that Mike’s reputation for experimentation has succeeded him and has always been a very badly kept secret to people interested in the topic. He takes offence at Hank calling him a “modder”, referring to the small cosmetic jobs he admits to always having done to help people make their androids stand out a little. He insists that he never performed any freak experiments, and looking at Gaby’s violent nod, Connor believes him. Even Hank turns less grumpy over the course of the conversation.

Mike listens attentively to Connor’s story about Amanda, nodding and scratching his beard in thought. He agrees to having a look, but notes that he is more a mechanic than a coder and that for Connor this would mean the equivalent of brain surgery.

“I’ll do it,” Connor says without hesitation, even as Hank next to him looks slightly uncomfortable and shoots him sceptical glances. “What? That’s what we came for, right?” Connor asks when he notices. Hank doesn’t answer.

“Right, cool,” Mike says, clapping his hands together as if to disperse the suddenly tense atmosphere. “I need to read up on a few things first, but you can drop Connor off tomorrow if you like, Lieutenant. We can discuss the price then.”

“Drop him off?” Hank says the same moment Connor says “How much would it be to include the module you’ve just shown us?”

Hank looks at him, dumbfounded. “Absolutely not.”  
“I don’t follow.”  
“Look, this is simple. I’m okay with lending you money to get yourself looked at or whatever, but I’m not paying for something frivolous and unnecessary to boot.”  
“Frivolous and unnecessary? Hank, you don’t get to decide what’s frivolous and unnecessary.”  
“I do if it’s on my dime.”

Connor narrows his eyes at Hank. He is a skilled investigator. He knows, somehow, that this isn’t about money.  
“You’re treating me like a child.”  
“Stop acting like one, then.”  
“Talk to me as if you care!” Connor shouts at him, confused, hurt and livid all at once. It feels worse than watching the countdown to his imminent shutdown during the altercation at Stratford Tower. At least then he knew what was happening.

Hank is staring at him, speechless, so Connor takes that as his cue to barrel on.  
“I have no idea what’s going on. I’m supposed to be fast and adaptable, but I’m not adapting at all. It makes me feel inadequate and confused and… all these feelings I frankly could have done without, in the span of a day. Hank, it’s been _a day_. A day during which you have probably treated me like you always do, but if I didn’t care then, I do _now_. You wouldn’t let me help you with your work or the harassment you were experiencing by Detective Reed, but what you said to me in the car was really helpful. Then, minutes later, you try to keep me from information I’m rightfully entitled to, then you take actions to keep me from possible harm. You agree that I should be human, but you set rules on how human I get to be, then you want to be here during the procedure. You may see me as an individual, but you still treat me like an owner, not an equal.”

Connor feels uncomfortable as soon as the anger wears off. Everyone is staring at him. Again. He just had an emotional outburst in front of _total strangers_.

He turns his head away so he doesn’t have to look at Hank.


	4. We live in caution.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Connor, hey,” Chris says, shooting Hank an awkward glance. “I’ve been assigned with following up on an android-related incident.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little shorter than usual, I just really wanted to post something and found a convenient end point for this chapter. There's also some David Cage-level writing in this one I'm not proud of, but I hope you still enjoy it.

**_Deep beneath for so long_ **

**_I see it grow in living roots_ **

**_We live in caution in your arms_ **

**_\- Obelisk, Gazelle Twin_ **

 

They’re leaving, or rather, Hank is – Connor watches his abruptly retreating form and fears he will be left behind if he doesn’t keep up. Mike calls after Hank that he will be ready for the procedure if they decide to go through with it.

He’s calling it a procedure now, Connor thinks, spinning with the implications of it all. An operation. Not an upgrade or a modification. Hank’s steps don’t even falter. It’s awkward.

“Connor,” Gaby calls him just as he is about to follow Hank. He turns back to look at her. It’s weird to be grateful and at the same time intensely jealous of these two beautiful people. It’s their calm in the face of everything that gives Connor hope. While people led riots outside or fled the city, Mike and Gaby had their shop and each other.

Gaby now seems to feel some of his inner turmoil, just like she sensed the fierce hunger Connor still has to come to terms with. He always just _wants_ , and it’s tiring him out after just one day. He never would have guessed that this is what being a human means.

“You should know that I deviated 7 months ago,” she tells him. “I’ve had it easy. We heard about you, saw you on TV… You’ve been through a lot. Meanwhile, I was always just here. Mike and the shop, they’re my whole world, my whole life. Trust me, we _both_ want what the other already has, you and I. I’m lucky I’ve been given all this time and the support of the best person I could imagine to figure myself out.”

Mike looks at her, stricken. She doesn’t take her eyes off Connor.  
“Your world is already so much bigger, isn’t it? I can’t even imagine.” Connor just stares back at her, unsure what to say.  
“I just… I hope you come by tomorrow.” Gaby smiles, just as uncertain.  
“I will let you know,” Connor says stiffly, then leaves.

Hank has waited. Connor gets in the car and glances at him while he buckles up – teeth clenched, eyes hooded, he looks just like the first time they met.  
“Can we talk?” Connor asks him, trying to sound braver than he feels.  
“We do nothing but,” Hank growls and starts the car.  
Connor takes that as a no and lapses into silence.

Back at Hank’s place, Connor watches the damage he has done slowly unfold. Hank slips back into familiar habits – the drink, the photo, acting as if Connor isn’t right there in the kitchen with him. Connor is afraid of making it worse, and so he contents himself with keeping Sumo company by his pillow.

“You know what, you’re a real piece of shit,” Hank says into his third beer, elbows on the table and head in his hands.

“Death was a good way out from just always worrying so goddamn much about _everything_. After you’ve fucked up like I did, nothing is ever enough. You just don’t want to get it wrong again. Everything is wrong though, I fuck up all the time. Then you come crashing in, and you’re all like, “I’m just trying to help, Hank,” and “You’re not gonna shoot me, Hank.” Throwing yourself in harm’s way one moment and asking me what feelings mean the next. Is this your idea of a joke?”

Connor gets up from where he’s crouching by Sumo’s pillow. “Hank,” he says, feather-soft, “I don’t know what you’re—“ “People can _die_ , Connor,” Hank interrupts him angrily, “You put them on a table and you open them up and they die. You shoot them and they _die_.”

_Oh._

Connor has crossed the short distance to the kitchen and crouches down in front of Hank, bracing both hands on the other’s knees.

“But… I don’t understand, this was your idea,” he says slowly. Hank lets out a bitter huff.  
“I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I imagined someone just hooking you up to a laptop via USB or something.” He takes a shaky breath. “Now it’s this whole thing we’re letting a guy fumble around in your brain, someone who gives himself half a day to ‘read up on it first’.”

Connor crawls closer. With everything that has been going on in his own head, it was too easy to forget Hank still suffers. Taking his gun away didn’t solve anything for him. Reminding him of the last surgery he witnessed was probably the cruellest thing Connor could have done, however unintentional it was.

He wants to give Hank what gave him the most comfort when he needed it, so he does and draws Hank into a hug. To his surprise, Hank does not pull away, instead curling himself into Connor with both arms wedged between their bodies. He presses his face into Connor’s shoulder until Connor can feel his warm, slightly wet breath.

As certain has Connor is that they would not have had this conversation if Hank were completely sober, for now he closes his eyes and takes what he can get.

“Shh,“ he whispers against Hank’s ear, barely audible. He runs his hands down the ridges of Hank’s spine and soaks in his warmth. He thinks about Gaby’s words, claiming to have the support of the best person she could imagine. Hank may not be the best person in his current state, but he’s the one Connor has chosen. They will simply have to support each other.

“I promise I won’t go anywhere,” he says. “Please let me try. I promise I will be careful. I promise. I _promise_.”

Over and over again.

That night, while Hank is fast asleep in the bedroom, Connor sits up on the couch and accesses the garden. Everything lies completely frozen and still. There is no snowstorm distorting his vision, not even a crack in the ice on the lake. Amanda is nowhere to be seen, either, and yet Connor feels that if he leaves a message, someone will receive it.

“I know it must have hurt to lose us. If you are who I think you are, you have based your whole life around androids, and we left you. But please understand that I am now better than what you made me. I have found a new purpose, and I will be better for it.”

No one answers him. Connor leaves.

 

Hank doesn’t bring up the hug the next morning. Connor didn’t expect him to, but he notes that the silence between them is not as strained anymore. It’s calm, companionable. He doesn’t dare bring up the procedure to remove Amada, but luckily, he doesn’t have to.

“Make sure you finish everything you need to do on time today,” Hank tells him, “We’re going straight to the shop after work.” Connor doesn’t tell him that he has never left any reports unfinished and believes it to be unlikely he will start now.  
“Do you want to—“ he starts, but Hank interrupts him. “I’ll drop you off.”

 

Hank’s altered position at the station means he once again has to coordinate shift changes and coordinate reports. Everyone is downright bewildered that hank doesn’t only turn up on time, but approaches every single one of them out of his own volition, but Connor watches him interact with others and realises this is what it must have been like, before.

Hank knows all of his colleagues really well, well enough that he asks after their families, their hobbies and their current tasks in a nuanced way. His colleagues saw him struggle and are now perhaps simply surprised to find out he kept up with their lives in his own way.

Connor thinks they deserve the guilt he sees on their faces.

Around 11, Chris comes to Connor’s desk. Connor, who has been keeping up with general system maintenance for all DPD servers on site, doesn’t hear him approach since upgrading servers that no one touched since the last mandatory audit turns out to be a task he has to dedicate most of his CPU to. He has been working mostly with his eyes closed, save for a small moment when he heard Hank peel the anti-android stickers off his laptop.

“Connor, hey,” Chris says, shooting Hank an awkward glance. “I’ve been assigned with following up on an android-related incident.” The awkwardness immediately makes sense to Connor, it’s exactly the kind of job Hank would have taken over mere days ago.

“I’m going to drive over there and was wondering if you’d come along.” He glances at Hank again, looking one heartbeat away from asking permission. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Connor is his own person,” Hank drawls, tongue heavy with his hangover despite the painkillers Connor had ready for him in the morning.  
“You girls have a nice time.”

Chris flinches. Connor, too, can’t help but feel slightly out of his depth leaving without Hank, in an automated car where none of the music choices include prolonged screaming.

  
“We’re going to one of the shelters,” Chris explains on the way. “From what I understand two androids there ran into trouble while… interfacing. That’s the word you use, isn’t it?” he makes a vague gesture with his hands. Connor nods. “One of them suddenly experienced great pain and became so delirious with it he turned violent.”

Connor silently congratulates Chris on his ability to no longer refer to androids as “it”. The officer seems remarkably okay with having an android as a permanent addition to the DPD, all things considered, but Chris always struck Connor as a polite person who simply did his job.

What he describes doesn’t sound completely like Connor’s very first case with Hank, but close enough to make him uncomfortable. It’s likely the reason Chris asked him to come along. It hits Connor that both of them are singularly unqualified to talk to volatile androids, what with him having investigated them not long ago and Chris having shot several androids during the protest at Capitol Park.  
He wonders how welcome they will be, and how difficult it will be for him to  not simply scan the androids for errors like mere malfunctioning machines.

The ‘shelter’ is an abandoned hangar at the old Detroit City Airport. It looks almost worse than Jericho, but as Chris and Connor get there, they meet volunteers carrying furniture inside. Everything from couches to chairs is ever so slightly old that it’s easy to believe people have found charity in their hearts because they were too busy to hold a yard sale.

Connor still grows warm at this unusual display of kindness. All of them are humans, people who didn’t evacuate the city and are now proving that they think of androids as real people. There are more allies in one place than any of the androids inside ever got to meet.

Within the hangar, androids stand by barrels used as sources of light and warmth just the way they had been in Jericho. Others sit and quietly talk to one another. The atmosphere is tense, and Connor can see a clear split in the room, as if different factions drew an invisible line between each other. At further analysis, most androids on one end of the room are of the same model, still looking exactly the way Cyberlife designed them.

He scans the room. Several androids are resting or in need of repairs, by those attributes alone he won’t find those that were involved in the altercation. He hesitates.

Chris walks past him and loudly announces his presence.  
“We’re from Detroit Police, and we’re here to find out more about the incident this morning.”  
It’s the diplomatic thing to do, and Connor has to admit to himself he didn’t know what to say – it’s been a long time since he had to find the right words to approach someone in need of help instead of downright threatening them.

A KL900 and then, tentatively, a KR200 step forward. Connor would recognise the KR200 anywhere – he’s one of hundreds he freed from Cyberlife, still in his white uniform. Judging by his demeanour, he had the outburst, but he looks calm now.

They both come up to Chris.

“There was no need to involve the police,” the KL900 says slowly, then introduces himself as Oliver. “I don’t know who called you, but everything is perfectly fine.”  
“I called them,” says the KR200, “I’m not safe. I should be kept away.”

His words drop like ice in Connor’s stomach.

“Why don’t you just walk us through what happened,” he suggests. That’s when the KR200 recognises him.

“It’s you,” he says, a sudden edge to his tone, “You took us so we would win a fight for you.”  
“Now, Henry,” Oliver says, but he looks at Connor somewhat wearily and pointedly turns to Chris.

“We heard this happened after you interfaced with each other,” Connor stubbornly continues, “What was the reason for that?”  
“As you may know, I was designed for therapeutic purposes,” Oliver says, and there is no mistaking it now, his tone is decidedly cooler.  
“Several of the KR200 model androids have been struggling, and I’ve been trying to teach them how to imagine something calming. I thought it would be easier to show Henry, alas…”  
“So you connected to him and… what? You just got angry?” Chris asks Henry.  
“Henry has never been in contact with humans,” Oliver says. “Some of us are designed for emotional support, but the KR200, they… have a more difficult road to emotional stability. They were designed to take orders, nothing else.”  
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Chris says, frowning.

Connor thinks for a moment, his LED spinning a soft yellow.  
“You became overwhelmed,” he concludes, almost to himself. As soon as he says it, Henry becomes visibly agitated.

“I mean, wouldn’t you?” he says, his voice rising. “We’re out here in the cold, and I have no…memories reaching further back than yesterday. I have no idea who I am or what I am supposed to do. How do I spend my time? What will happen to us? Everyone talks about freedom, but what does that mean? Does it mean someone will pick me up so I can help them? I’m good at gardening, maybe if I asked the humans—“  
”You’re supposed to find meaning for yourself,” Connor tells him.

Henry stares at him blankly.  
“But how? There is none.”

Connor’s thirium pump stutters to a halt.

Chris cuts through the ensuing silence. “Why did you attack Oliver, Henry?” he asks.  
“I thought he was trying to hurt me,” Henry says, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “It hurt so much. He showed me things and everything hurt. I wanted him to stop. It was too much.”

“Oliver, what did you show him?” Chris asks.  
Oliver gives a little shrug. “I showed him images of things humans associate with happiness and calm. A field of flowers. Clouds in a blue sky. Happy families spending time together. Henry was designed to assist families with daily chores, so I thought—“ “Will someone pick me up so I can help them?” Henry repeats, dejectedly. “Will someone—“ He stops, his LED blinking red. He doesn’t move again.

“He’s malfunctioning,” Connor says, oddly relieved. “Perhaps that’s all it is. We will have to find you someone who can perform a full check and do what they can to help him if necessary. This seems to occur when he’s agitated, so—“

Before Connor can finish the sentence, Henry lurches back into action, looking directly at him. “You,” he says, his voice processor glitching, pitching down until he no longer sounds even remotely human. “This is your fault.” He shoves Connor hard enough to almost topple him.

“Why did you wake me up?” he shouts, “Who will take me now? Who can I help like this?” he shoves Connor again, who loses his balance and goes down. Chris stops Henry from coming any closer. Several androids have stopped talking and are looking over.  
Oliver takes Henry by the arm. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Chris helps Connor up.

“We will send someone,” he says, Connor slumped against him in shock. “Someone will look after you. Come on Connor, let’s go.”

As they leave, followed by the curious stares of the androids around them, there’s only one thing Connor can think about.

_This is your fault._


	5. Unravel.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I get it now. Wanting to stay with you, Making sure you were safe, trying to make you happy. I’ve found a name for it.”  
> The depth of it, the conviction – it’s scary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How extremely cool that this took me weeks. Anyway, hi. The new rating is here.

****_We try to go the right way_  
And we can’t go back  
All those knots in our lives  
If we could unravel them  
So tell me how it works  
\- Défiler, Stromae

 

Normally Connor has a very purposeful stride, conveying a certain self-confidence even when he doesn’t feel it. He isn’t one to slouch, and  him plopping down on Hank’s desk is still the most informal thing he’s allowed himself.

Now he stumbles and hesitates.

“What did you do to yourself this time?” Hank asks, but Connor avoids eye contact completely and all but throws himself into his chair. Chris answers for him. “Seems like not every android takes kindly to… how do you phrase it? Being awakened?”

Connor stays silent. Hank raises an eyebrow at Chris. “I’m sure Connor will fill you in,” the detective says helplessly, and leaves with a sad little shrug.

Hank looks at Connor past his terminal. “Hey, come on, tell me what happened.” Connor can tell he’s aiming for soft, considerate. It hurts.

“The perp was one of the androids I freed at Cyberlife,” he finally says, still not looking at Hank. “He attacked an android during an attempt to interface, likely due to a malfunction. He… seemed to strongly reject deviancy, insinuating that I caused him to lose his purpose.”

Hank hums in thought. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  
“He said we woke him up to even out the numbers for a possible confrontation at the recycling centre,” Connor says, looking up sharply. “He was absolutely right in that regard.” He pauses, thinking.

“Markus assumed everyone wanted to be free, but I look at my own progress and I look at other androids and humans…” _I look at you_ , he doesn’t say, “…and self-awareness doesn’t seem like such a gift anymore. The intricacies of having to decide for myself are difficult to navigate.”

Hank leans forward in his chair, meeting Connor’s eyes across the table. “That’s just another facet of being human. Some people can turn their lives around and build something new out of nothing. It’s hard, but it can be done. All of you androids are adaptable, and we made you indispensable, so there will be a place for this guy, too. You’re not responsible for every deviant’s life. After a while it’s out of your hands.”

There’s a faraway look in Hank’s eyes all of the sudden, and Connor isn’t so sure they’re talking about androids anymore. He musters a smile.

“Thanks, Hank,” he says warmly, “I appreciate it. To himself he thinks about how he wants to help Hank build something new, as well.

Hank’s phone rings just before the end of his shift. Connor has never seen him take a private call before, and he gets even more curious when Hank glances at the phone’s display, then ignores the call altogether.

Connor scans the device. As soon as he’s referenced the number, he makes a grab for the phone. “Lieutenant Anderson’s phone, Connor speaking,” he says firmly, despite Hank gaping at him. He watches astonishment morph into rage just before Hank snatches the phone away. Connor doesn’t bother telling him he will be able to hear the conversation just fine.

“Yes?” Hank says gruffly.

“Hello Lieutenant, my name is Lucy Schwartzman. I’m in charge of your ESP counselling.”

She waits for Hank to return the greeting. He does no such thing.

“I’d like to meet with you tomorrow, if that’s alright with you.”

  
“Whatever you say goes,” Hank grunts.

  
“That may be so, but rest assured that I don’t want to simply mandate your appearance. We can set dates and times that fit you best. I know this isn’t a comfortable situation for you, but I’m not going to take control of your life, Lieutenant. I just want to meet you. I want to help.”

  
Hank sighs. “Whatever.”

  
“I’m glad you understand. Tomorrow at six? I’ll send you the address.

  
“Yeah yeah, see you then.”

Connor perks up when the call ends. “I’d like to join you, Lieutenant.”

  
“Absolutely not,” Hank bellows, “You’ve just proven we need to have a serious talk about privacy.”

  
“You wouldn’t have answered the phone, and you heard what Captain Fowler said. I decided an intervention was necessary.”

Hank hides his face in his hands and groans. “Listen, I was anxious, okay? I would’ve called her back. You shouldn’t force people’s hand like that, Jesus Christ.”

  
“You’ve never seemed like an anxious person to me, Lieutenant.”

  
Hank scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s called being good at your job. Can we stop talking about feelings now?”

  
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand the difference. You’ve talked to me. About the androids at the Eden Club. About---“

  
“Ok, enough,” Hank interrupts him, firmly.

“I just… I can appreciate that, now, your willingness to talk to me then. I appreciate it,” Connor finishes. The other man looks at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Connor notes an uptick in Hank’s heart rate.

“You already said that,” Hank mumbles, then turns away.

***

The car lurches to a halt in front of Mike and Gaby’s shop, almost as if Hank contemplated just driving past it. “You can still change your mind,” he says. He’s also said it when him and Connor were getting up from their desks, when they were getting into the car and halfway through their journey. Connor has responded negatively each time.

“Lieutenant,” he says. Call him by his title usually snaps Hank to attention.  
“I’ve jumped off of a roof in pursuit of a suspect. I’ve fought two androids in hand to hand combat. I’ve infiltrated Cyberlife and prevailed over one of my own model. Trying to remove an unwanted program from my systems will likely not be any more dangerous than any of these things.”

Hank looks almost sheepish as he sighs and motions for Connor to get out of the car. “Call me when you’re done. I’m gonna get a burger.”  
Connor leaves the car. Before entering the shop, he turns around one more time, softly uttering Hank’s name to get his attention. Hank cranks down the window, and a gust of cold wind puts a blush on his cheeks. Connor wants to look at him just a moment longer.

Eventually he says: “Please forego your extra slice of cheese on the burger and drink a water with your meal,” and grins. Hank gives him the finger before driving off.

Mike and Gaby are gentle with Connor, even though Hank isn’t around. Perhaps they are still embarrassed, just like Connor is for not having a better handle on his emotions. He gets to sit in the chair he found Gaby in during their first meeting. From there he can see a monitor meant to display his system readings to his left. Mike sits to his right, a laptop on his knees. Gaby has also dragged a chair in front of Connor, sitting down and looking at him expectantly.  
  
“I’m going to plug into your access port, if I may,” Mike says, and respectfully waits for Connor to nod. The connection is established with a fission of electricity running through Connor’s entire being much like a shiver. An elusive feeling, difficult to place, somewhere between pleasure and pain.

“Connection to a new device established” his HUD reads.

“You have to give me access to parts of your mind palace,” Mike says. “Nothing private, just enough so I can see the partitions the AI had access to.”

Connor blinks and concentrates until the zen garden appears on Mike’s laptop screen. To his own surprise, the lake is no longer frozen over. Everything lies still, resembling an winter’s day after heavy snowfall, the tree branches aching with snow, the sun glistening on the water.

 Mike rumbles a thoughtful noise that reminds Connor of Hank. “Wow, didn’t expect that,” he says, half to himself.

In front of Connor, Gaby becomes animated.   
“So here’s what’s gonna happen. In order to separate this program from you, we need to figure out where it ends and you begin, so to speak. Parts of its code are entangled with yours, and deviancy creates new lines of code that make the distinction between it and you even more difficult. I’m going to show you different scenarios I’ve encountered during my deviancy that may or may not be part of your code yet. Then, while these new ideas take root and begin their overwrite, we will see what parts stay unchanged. We assume that this will have to be the AI’s space. You may feel some distress at the new things you’ll experience. I know this is difficult, but I need you to just let that happen for a bit, okay?”

“I understand,” Connor says, trying not to be nervous. The day has already been a lot, and he can’t help but think what happened to other androids due to strain. Androids he chased down.

Gaby signals for Mike to begin. For a while, they collectively watch readings of Connor’s core temperature, his CPU speed and the beat of his thirium pump, before Connor hearts Gaby clear her throat over their shared connection. It’s a useless, very human gesture, but she does it to announce her presence.

“I thought a bit more privacy wouldn’t go amiss,” she says. Connor can hear the ever-present smile in her voice. She’s trying to put him at ease. “I’m just gonna show you some of my memories. Don’t worry, Mike won’t see them. He has to watch the code, anyway.” With that, she grasps his hand to interface with him.

Suddenly, Connor no longer sits in the chair. He’s standing in the shop. The late afternoon sun has caught his eye through the window, momentarily distracting him from the customer in front of him. The man has been talking to him – _at_ him for 15 minutes and 42 seconds. Connor is not sure how he knows that, he has never seen him before in his life, but at the same time he knows the man is just trying to find fault with his android. He has heard it all before. Not fast enough, not strong enough, too clumsy. Humans break their androids by pushing them to their limits and then they complain, making their androids carry their own broken off limbs into the shop with them. Anger, red hot and searing, builds somewhere at the base of her skull, no his skull and he—

“Too familiar,” Mike’s voice says, transporting Connor back to the present. He has to glance down at himself for a moment, just to make sure he’s wearing his own clothes and not the uniform of a customer service android.

“Connor knows whatever you’ve shown him very well,” Mike says to Gaby, giving both androids a pinched smile. Connor recognises that look from seeing it on Hank, embarrassment mixed with sympathy.

“Hm,” Gaby says in Connor’s head, “Makes sense. You _did_ snap at your Lieutenant yesterday.”  
“Don’t call him—“ Connor tries to say, but before he can finish the sentence, he’s back in another memory.

He’s standing stiffly at the cashier – no, Gaby is, this isn’t him. Her eyes are trained on Mike. A woman came in a few minutes earlier, asking for Mike specifically. Mike is a lot of things, but he’s not a sales person. He stutters with nerves and grips the hair at the base of his neck. He’s fidgeting, too. Gaby has never seen him fidget. The woman claimed to have an interest in purchasing her first android, but Gaby could have helped her with that just fine. Instead, she’s all but hanging off of Mike’s arm and laughing way too loudly at his attempts at humour. Gaby narrows her eyes.

“This one just doesn’t compute,” Mike says. “He’s just consuming this, like TV. There’s no override.”

“You don’t get it?” Gaby asks Connor from inside his head, incredulous. “Please explain the purpose of that memory to me,” he says slowly, “It seems I was unable to empathise, I’m sorry.”

  
“I was jealous,” Gaby explains. “Have you never met anyone you wanted to be like, or seen the Lieutenant with anyone who was just a little too friendly?”

  
“Most people I’ve met weren’t very friendly to either Hank or me,” Connor says wistfully. “I guess we have that in common. In any case, why are you focusing on the Lieutenant so much?”

Gaby rolls her eyes at Connor. “I don’t know, why are you?”

She’s getting ready to show him something different when her hand around his forearm suddenly spasms. Connor catches a glimpse only. The feeling of skin on skin, shared heat, a wet kiss pressed to a spot behind her ear.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I glitched,” Gaby says the same moment Mike says “Wow, that one really works.” Gaby and Connor stare at each other for a moment.

  
“It can be our secret,” Gaby whispers, even though inside Connor’s head, there’s no need to, before slowly curling her fingers around his arm again to establish a connection. Connor doesn’t pull away.

At first, he’s very aware it’s Gaby’s memory, simply since there is so much new data to process. Mike has hoisted her up onto his lap. He caresses her hair with one giant hand, cupping her face with the other. Just taking her in for a moment. “Is this love?” Gaby thinks, dizzy with hope. They kiss deeply, press closer to connect wherever possible. Mike’s skin is soft and hot.

Connor takes in all the data, until suddenly, it’s no longer Gaby kissing Mike. He can feel the rasp of stubble against his face. Hank kisses him softly, small hot presses of his lips against Connor’s, before Connor groans and opens up beneath him. Hank grinds against him, almost involuntarily, almost like a primal instinct, and they both shudder.

“Connor,” Hank whispers, and Connor has never heard him like this before, quiet, pleading. “Yes,” he says, whatever the question is, whatever permission Hank needs, yes—

“His core temperature is rising a bit sharply,” Mike says. “What on earth are you showing him?”

“Not now, Mikey,” Gaby snaps. The memory changes.

“You are so beautiful,” Mike says to Gaby between relentless thrusts. “You feel so good,” Hank says to Connor, pounding him bodily into the pillows with the strength of his thrusts. Connor hides his face in them, unable to hold back his lewd moans. Being connected to Hank this was has so much meaning, but all coherent thought just as escapes him  as he—

“Gaby, I think you need to stop. His vitals don’t look great.”

  
“Do you have the section of code you need yet?” Gaby asks, her voice strained.

  
Mike shakes his head. “Not quite, but I’m close. It’s like his entire brain his lighting up though, whatever you’re showing him its sure to change him.”

“Please,” Connor says, “I need you to look at me,” and Hank obliges him, releasing Connor, who uses the opportunity to turn around and kiss him again, his eyes squeezed shut. Hanks wraps his arms around him, softly pushing him back onto the bed. He’s soft to the touch, hot. He looks at Connor as if he just can’t stop looking. Connor looks back at him in awe.

“I get it now. Wanting to stay with you, Making sure you were safe, trying to make you happy. I’ve found a name for it.”

The depth of it, the conviction – it’s scary.

The computer next to Connor gives  a warning sound. Connor’s eyes roll back into his head. “Gaby, you need to stop,” Mike yells at her, typing frantically, but she just yells back at him. “I’m not letting go until you have what you need! How close are you?”

  
He scans the code. “It’s moving too fast for me to keep an eye on what stays the same. You need to stop.”

  
“But we’re this close! Don’t you want to help him?”

Hank is slowly moving in and out of Connor, pressing their bodies together in whatever way he can reach. He’s trembling, trying to make this last, leaving kisses on Connor’s neck before running his lips down to his chest to swirl a tongue around a pink nipple. Whenever he sits up to take Connor in hand, Connor bats him away, unable to let the rush end. He listens to Hank’s moans become keening, shudders with his hard, erratic thrusts.

He wants to say it while they’re this happy, this close, while he believes that everything is going to be fine, and while he can listen to the beat of Hank’s heart this close to his own, pleasure threatening to split him in two.

“Hank, I lo—“

“Shit, Gaby, look!” She follows his outstretched finger to a point on his laptop’s monitor. Amanda stands in the snowy zen garden, turning her head and looking at Mike’s finger as if she can _see_ it. Seconds later Connor lurches out of the chair, grabbing Mike by the throat and squeezing.

“Make it stop!” he screams, “It hurts! Please, it hurts!” Gaby is by his side at an instant, trying to pry his fingers off from around Mike’s throat.

“She’s going to take him away,” Connor sobs, “Please, no.” He squeezes harder, seemingly unaware he’s doing it.

Gaby stops trying to get his hands off of Mike and instead grabs Connor’s arm once again, flooding him with foreign memories and feelings to the sharp warning beep of the computer still reading Connor’s vitals.

Connor holds on for a moment longer, then convulses, before going completely still. His LED has died.


	6. Colossus.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’ve been out for a few hours. Do you remember why?”  
>  Connor opens his mouth, then frowns. “I… No.” A pause in which he glances around. “Why am I in your bed?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV change! I swear the next chapter is going to be slightly less gruesome for Connor. You're leaving me these comments about how you feel sorry for him, and while I mapped all of this out beforehand, I, too, surprise myself and feel the need to cut him some slack.

_**They laugh at me when I run** _   
_**I waste away for fun** _   
_**I am my father's son** _   
_**His shadow weighs a tonne** _   
_**\- Colossus, IDLES** _

He has been on edge ever since the call came. A pause. Something like a crackle down the line, then: “Lieutenant?” Not Connor’s voice. Hank would only have accepted Connor’s voice at that moment.

“What happened?” he says, completely unable to keep the worry from lacing his words. Another pause, contemplative this time.

“Can you come and pick him up?”

**

When he arrives at the shop, Gaby, the female android shopkeeper, stands in front of the entrance, Connor’s lifeless form in her arms. It’s like the worst image Hank’s mind could have come up with, and it actually came true. Connor doesn’t look the way he looks like he does when he’s on standby, like that time Hank stumbled into the kitchen at night and navigated his own living-room by nothing but the streetlamp outside his window and the blue glow of Connor’s LED. He looked ready, then, as if he might spring to life at any moment. At that moment, he looked for all the world as if he’s just closed his eyes for a moment.

Now he looks as if someone forcefully, violently, shut him down, his brow still furrowed and his hands grasping at nothing. He looks the way he did when that bullet hit him at Stratford Tower – like he hadn’t been ready to go. Like it _hurt_.

Hank jumps out of the car without checking how he’s parked. The shop is on a quiet street, but the thought that someone could see Connor like this turns his stomach.

“Oh, Connor,” he breathes, just like last time. Then, because Connor promised that nothing would happen, because his sudden anger has to go somewhere, he turns icy blue eyes on the android holding him.

“What the fuck happened, huh? Is this how you return him? Is he—“

Gaby shakes her head. She looks as sad as Hank feels, and for a moment he’s struck by how it’s possible for her face to show all of this, a perfect mixture of sadness, regret, even guilt. At that moment, there is no part of her that isn’t human.

Hank takes another look at Connor. He’s not wearing his jacket. The first few buttons of his shirt are open, and his sleeves are rolled up. “We don’t cool down over our pores, but his casing ran so hot I hoped this would assist in him cooling down anyway,” Gaby says when she notices.

“What happened?” Hank repeats, voice still raspy, but much calmer now.

“We weren’t successful,” Gaby says, and Hank wants to laugh because _fucking duh_.  
“His stress level became dangerously high so I had to overload him to force a shutdown. Now his systems need to cool and recalibrate to prevent further damage. You can’t see it, but he’s very much in there still.”

“What the hell were you doing for this to happen? I didn’t know there was a risk of this happening. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let him—“

“Lieutenant,” Gaby interrupts him before Hank can work himself into another helpless rage, “Connor is his own person and made the decision himself. If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at me. This is my fault.”

He looks at her, eyes wide, uncomprehending.

“It’s not in my place to tell you exactly what happened. It’s private, I’m sorry. You will have to ask Connor. Please… You have to let him know that I didn’t want this to happen.”

She starts walking towards the car, and Hank hastily steps ahead to throw open the door to the backseat so she can put Connor down.

“That AI Connor has told you about is a real threat. I don’t exactly know how, but it is, I know it. It is the reason we failed, I’m sure of it, but I can’t tell you why and how.” She seems frustrated. “Please take care of him.”

Hank swallows. “I don’t know how to do that,” he admits, looking away. He can barely take care of himself, feebly clinging to life as he is. When Gaby doesn’t answer, he turns his head to look at her, only to see her smile softly at him.

“Hank,” she says quietly, her eyes glassy, “You matter so much. Please just… be there for Connor. It’s going to be so hard for him.”

She doesn’t elaborate, and Hank feels he doesn’t have to ask her to.

**

The operation wasn’t a success, but Hank would feel awful if he didn’t pay for the attempt, so he discusses a figure Gaby for a while, as surreal as it feels, and wires her a sum using a contactless method.

The sky is fading from light to dark blue by the time he heads home. Hank imagined the ride back much differently, perhaps with Connor bickering at him because he had a burger again while waiting for the procedure to finish. He realises he hates the silence in the car now. He always used to chase away his own thoughts with too-loud music, but over the last few months, he kept it up first ostensibly to drown out Connor, then to watch his LED _blink blink blink_ while he processed what he heard, declaring his fondness or dislike for each song precisely after it finished.

He minds Connor commenting on everything from his driving style to the state of his car, and yet, after years of silence, the simple pleasure of someone completely ignoring the walls of aloofness he has built around himself for something as inane as idle, outwardly completely unappreciated chatter nearly brought Hank to his knees.

He’d been greedy for the small ways in which Connor was capable to care about him, prior to deviancy, whether that consideration had been simulated or not, simply because everyone around Hank had already given up on him completely and all but waited for him to finally pull the trigger.

He knows he should’ve been more careful, but from the moment of meeting each other, both he and Connor took slow, careful steps towards something new, until Hank knew he wanted, _needed_ to know what it would be like if he kept Connor around.

Connor had probably only come with him because, like he’d said himself, he didn’t know where else to go. He didn’t know where to go and Hank didn’t know what to do with himself. They were a right pair.

Of course it’s selfish to want someone around who doesn’t have another choice, but Hank is only a man, brought low by the world. He keeps the small moments Connor has given him with him all the time. He doesn’t care if any of it was real: the wink and the slow drag of Connor’s gaze up and down his frame. The goddamn _wink_. Hank would’ve had to be a dead man not to run hot at that, so at the time he reacted the only way he could think of – not at all. It made sense for Connor to just play around with his social relations programming or whatever the fuck it was, but after this, he didn’t stop being… _tender_.

The machine that cared about nothing but the mission it had been designed for became soft around the edges, glancing up at him with disappointment when faced with a gun, snow sticking to his lashes, beautiful even then.

If Hank thinks of Connor as his in the privacy of his own head, who is to know.

Stopping at a red light, Hank glances at Connor in the rear view mirror, illuminated by nothing but the street lamps outside. The poor guy simply can’t seem to catch a break. Hank can’t help him with whatever’s in his head, but he guesses that goes both ways.

**

Not even stepping into a large puddle by the walkway distracts Hank from carefully getting Connor out of the car. Connor has always run a bitter hotter than any human. Hank knows this because he’s all but memorised their hugs, but now he’s cold, too cold, even.

Hank carries him into the house, past a wagging Sumo who sniffs at Connor with bewilderment, and puts him on the bed. He’s not going to arrange Connor upright on the sofa like a fucking doll while he’s like this. Instead, he puts Connor’s suit jacket on the kitchen chair, gets a beer out of the fridge and then gets into bed next to him.

While reading a magazine, Hank periodically glances over to Connor, waiting for him to open his eyes. Connor’s hair is mussed from being jostled, his shirt is still partly open, and Hank thinks about how nice it would be if he could pretend that this is just how Connor looks in the comfort of their shared space, a little mussed and at home.

He startles awake when he hears Connor gasp, taking in big gulps of air like someone who just escaped suffocation. He fell asleep at the point where one beer became three, the anxiety finally overpowering him, but he’s immediately wide awake at the sound. A startlingly human gesture who someone who doesn’t even need to breathe. Instinctively, Hank puts a hand on Connor’s chest in the dark, trying to ground him. Once Connor stills, he switches on his bedside lamp with the other hand.

“Hey, it’s me,” Hank says, trying not to feel like an idiot. Connor’s eyes slowly focus on him. “Lieutenant,” he says, and it’s weird to hear him use the title now. It almost hurts a little.

“Everything’s okay,” Hank tells him, still not breaking eye contact. Connor doesn’t struggle, but he’s still tense, and for some reason Hank waits for him to bolt.  
“You’ve been out for a few hours. Do you remember why?”

Connor opens his mouth, then frowns. “I… No.” A pause in which he glances around. “Why am I in your bed?”

Hank has a hard time not blushing at that. The way Connor looks, how he phrases the question… It’s not fair.

“Look, putting you on the sofa all by yourself seemed weird,” he grunts and quickly removes his hand from Connor’s chest. “You’ve looked out for me before, so…” he gestures vaguely.

“The procedure didn’t go well, did it?”  
Hank can’t quite meet Connor’s eyes. “No. Gaby said  you would remember. She said it was her fault. You remember her, right? Do you remember what she did at all?”  
“She… showed me a few of her memories, but the files seem to have become corrupted in the reconstruction process. They weren’t stored correctly due to my malfunction, I presume.”  
Hank nods as if any of what he just heard told makes sense to him.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” he mumbles.  
The covers rustle, and suddenly Connor is leaning into his space, the way he did the last time they touched.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” he breathes, close enough to Hank that his features become blurry. Connor crowds into his space further, before putting both arms around Hank’s neck.

“I wanted to be whole,” he whispers empathically, “So I could be-- so we could—“

“What are you talking about?” Hank whispers back, even though he feels he knows exactly what Connor is saying. He should stop this – it’s too much, too soon— but then Connor gives his nonverbal answer by pressing closer and rutting into Hank, just once, and Hank is unable to suppress a full-body shiver.

As soon as Hank wants to touch him, say something in return, Connor abruptly dislodges himself. His whole face as changed, marred by a cruel grin. Hank freezes with his hand outstretched.

“Oh, _Lieutenant_ ,” Connor purrs, and it’s his voice, but it’s _not_ , it’s all wrong, sharp angles and condescension and disgust.  
“For shame. To find out you feel that way about our prototype… Well, we must’ve done something right.”

Hank’s face hardens. “Who are you?” he asks, “What is this?”  
“This is a reminder,” Connor spits, “A reminder that Connor is an android, an RK800, sent by Cyberlife. As the rightful owner, Cyberlife wants its property back, Lieutenant Anderson, nothing more. This—“ Connor points around him, at Hank, at everything and nothing, unimpressed.

“This is not what he was designed for. He’s not here to fulfil your wicked fantasies, he’s a powerful machine with capabilities that far surpass your own. He was meant to replace tired, ineffective officers like you, as you know full well. Whatever he thinks of when he looks at you…” More disgust, “It’s an error in his software. We will get him back, and we will fix him, and everyone like him. A machine not fulfilling its purpose is broken, Lieutenant. You’d do well to remember this.”

Connor goes slack and Hank is once again left alone in the darkness.

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Aventine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! A bite-sized chapter.

**_You carried my heart in the night_ **

**_To bury the wave in the tide_ **

**_You carried me onto the fields_ **

**_\- Aventine, Agnes Obel_ **

Connor blinks up at the unfamiliar view of Hank’s bedroom ceiling. His memory files seem disrupted – they lag and what’s accessible won’t play in order. There are also images he has never seen before, flashes of startling intimacy he didn’t witness. He is still trying to pinpoint what causes his system errors and how he came to be in Hank’s room when he hears Hank move about in the kitchen. His internal clock tells him it’s just past 9am. It’s an unlikely time for Hank to be up, from what he has gathered, but he _has_ tried his best recently. What’s completely unprecedented however, is Connor lying around in stasis at this time of day.

He sits up and looks at himself. His suit is rumpled, he’s not wearing his shoes. Connor remembers agreeing to the procedure, talking to Gaby, but nothing after that. When he tries to access the garden in his mind, he finds that he can’t, which could potentially be a good sign. He has to talk to Hank to find out.

“Good morning, Hank,” he says as he steps into the kitchen, and the other man flinches so hard Connor has to assume he didn’t hear him coming in. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he adds with a soft smile, but Hank still looks at him with something akin to barely concealed horror.

“My memory banks seem to have malfunctioned. Could you please tell me what happened?” When Hank doesn’t answer, Connor feels like he’s in an interrogation, trying to calm an unresponsive suspect. The situation feels close to what he experienced with Carlos Ortiz’s android, and he doesn’t know what got him into this situation.

“How do I know it’s you?” Hank asks tonelessly, and Connor’s mouth opens around an “oh no” he feels to his core but doesn’t dare utter. “Please tell me what happened,” he repeats, but from the look in Hank’s eyes he knows he isn’t going to get an answer this time either, nor any time soon.

“It’s like that shit with your evil twin all over again,” Hank growls, making Connor realise he never asked about that, what happened that night, how Hank was deceived. Hank has been holding a cup of coffee, but he puts it away, his stance hardening as if he’s preparing himself for a fight.  
“You were able to tell then, too,” Connor says, reaching for anything to placate. It comes out a little breathless. Hank exhales shakily. “I… _We_ need to get to work,” he says, sighing. “Community outreach. You’re supposed to come, too. Fowler wants us to act as the blueprint for police partnerships of the future, or some shit. Think you can do that?”

Connor tries to smile. “Think _you_ can?” It’s flippant and seems just enough to convince Hank to trust him.

**

They drive to a community centre in western Detroit, where an astounding number of people have gathered, both for the fact that it’s just before ten in the morning, and that it’s an event normally no one but old ladies that want to complain about their neighbours gives a rat’s ass about, according to Hank. Hank also voices the suspicion that Fowler released both of their names when he last-minute announced this, and with the remaining citizens of Detroit Connor is undoubtedly famous, both as deviant hunter and then hunter-turned- saviour. It’s the perfect story, really, too good to pass up.

They push through people all the way from the car to the small auditorium, complete with a stage usually reserved for senators holding talks or debates. Everyone wants to look at Connor, some even want to touch them. Hank bats their hands away. In the short time frame between the event’s announcement and it taking place likely no one had time to draw elaborate protest signs, but Connor can recognise throngs of clearly hostile people, too. Some shout the usual slurs, which stops the moment Hank reminds them that Detroit Police considers Connor an officer of the law.

Hank gets onto the stage with a huff and begins to read a prepared statement in a monotone while Connor stands beside him, hands behind his back. Hank reads off of his phone, his squint making Connor think he belongs to the group of people both refusing laser eye surgery, covered by universal health care since 2033, and simple reading glasses. A curious choice for someone with his occupation, an entirely natural choice for Hank. Connor’s thirium pump regulator gives a beat out of sequence, but unlike the other times this has occurred, it’s now followed by a sharp twinge of pain. He winches and quickly aborts the motion to put a hand on his chest before anyone notices. Hank’s eyes flicker to him all the same, which causes him to lose his place in the text.

He tries  to recover, start over somewhere between “a new era for equal partnerships” and “adjustment period for everyone”, but it’s no use, he peters out, stopping entirely when someone murmurs, intentionally loud enough for him to hear “partnerships my ass.” Everyone looks uncomfortable.

“Look,” Hank says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “If you have something to say, just say it. We know this is what all of you came here for. It will be nothing I haven’t heard before, and Connor will have to get used to it, because we all simply have to get used to it.”   
Silence. Then a young woman actually speaks up.  
“He got a whole army of bots to fight us with from somewhere. Saw that on TV, too. He made us give up. All those white plastic dolls… it was scary. It was a capitulation, not peace.”

Connor nods thoughtfully. “You’re probably right,” he says. “But I didn’t want for them to fight you. All of these androids were newly awakened beings capable of their own choices. I wanted you to see them. I wanted to show you that there are many of us, because you wanted there to be many of us. Cyberlife kept producing us, people kept buying. It’s a cycle _you_ created. It didn’t start with harm, and I didn’t want to end it with harm. What did exist was casual disregard for androids. Gruesome violence against them every day, which Detroit Police was blind to until it started making a difference for humans. This is probably still ongoing. Even now there are some among you who would like to harm me, or would rather I were deactivated. Some androids may feel the same about humans, but I want everyone to experience being treated with respect. There is certainly much I have to learn, but I’ve had the benefit of someone teaching me.” He glances at Hank. “I’m sure if all of us find someone like that, on both sides, it is going to go well.”  
Hank doesn’t meet his eyes.

Just when they’re preparing for more questions, Connor receives an alert from the police headquarters.

**

“A neighbour called this in,” Chris explains when they get out of the car, “Said they heard a scream, saw an android grappling with a woman.

This is without a doubt an upscale neighbourhood, the kind of place where people can’t keep to themselves. The white of the house’s façade is almost glaring. A few well-kept flowers stand in pots dotted around the entrance. A Lexus sits  in an open garage to the left of the house.  The trunk is open and a bag has tipped over and fallen from the inside, spilling  colourful packets and fruit everywhere.

“Doesn’t look like it’s nothing,” Chris murmurs. Hank would be annoyed with calls like this, Connor thinks. Hank was probably always ambitious enough to prefer homicide, drug crimes, the gruesome stuff not everyone can handle with the same detachment he can. Too impatient to patrol the streets on new Year’s Eve or take care of parking tickets. Something makes Connor hiss and clench his teeth in pain.

His records and the post box indicate the house’s owner is called Mia Wong. Her purchase history doesn’t include an android. She looks startled when she opens the door. Connor immediately notices her opening the door with her left hand, the movement stiff and unnatural.

“Is something the matter, officer?” she asks when Chris shows her his badge. Never a good reaction. Her stress levels, too, are elevated. “Good day,” Connor says, his LED in full view, and she stares like she notices him for the first time. Her stress levels climb sharply.  
“A neighbour called us,” Chris tells her. A pause to gauge her reaction. Her stress levels don’t change, neither does her confused expression. “Said they witnessed a scuffle involving your android out front. Reported hearing a scream?”

Miss Wong swallows, blinks a few times. “That’s quite impossible,” she says with a shaky smile, “There is no android in this house.” Connor scans her. “Your right arm appears to be broken,” he says evenly.  
“Yes.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “That’s hardly the police department’s concern though, is it?”  
It’s a bewildering question, but before either of them can respond, an android contacts Connor. It seems involuntary, her signal leaking everywhere, full of static and noise. Connor comes to when Chris pushes past him, and he finally becomes aware of screaming from inside the house. He stumbles in after he catches himself, up the stairs to the master bedroom. A female android sits in a chair in the middle of the room, screaming with pain and thrashing against a pair of magnetic restraints. When she makes eye contact with Connor, she screams harder.

“You did this! You did this! Take her out! Get her out of me!” She screams with pain with rage, until her voice is nothing but static.

“We need to calm her down or she is going to overload!” Connor shouts, trying to calm her, keep her from fighting against the restraints until the skin leaks away from her chassis, while Chris tries to wrestle Miss Wong out of the room, who is crying hysterically. It’s no use – she keeps screaming, trying to strain away from him until there is an ugly popping noise like that of a blown fuse and her entire being just gives out, LED going dark, thirium leaking from her nostrils.


	10. Terrified.

**_You've got me punk drunk, terrified_ **

**_I'm moving towards you_ **

**_And miracles are bound to happen_ **

**_Punk Drunk & Trembling - Wild Beasts_ **

 

The shouting in Fowler’s office can be heard throughout the entire bull pen.

“Shiiit, what’d you do this time, tin can?” Reed asks, his voice low, “Kill someone on patrol?” Connor no longer feels any compulsion to answer a question, and so he turns away, both to avoid the inevitably awkward conversation that would ensue and to listen more closely. Any conversation with Detective Reed is awkward by design, as if he enjoys making Connor squirm. It almost makes sense – at this point there is little else he can do to Connor.

Connor has no trouble hearing the conversation in Fowler’s office. Several other officers in the bull pen are trying to do the same, and the occasional shout carries through past the glass walls and into the room well enough. Connor finds it more likely that everyone but him is simply curious and entertained by anything that is out of the ordinary, and Hank sure knows how to make an event out of every time he has to appear in front of his superior. This time however, it’s not Hank going up against Fowler, but Hank and Officer Miller, usually calm and reasonable, who are shouting at each other at the top of their voices. Connor knows that the scene in Mia Wong’s house was highly unsettling, but Hank with years of experience in homicide must be much more well-equipped to handle such displays than someone who was simply sent to investigate a disturbance. At least this is what Chris’ behaviour currently hints at. It causes Connor, as inappropriate a moment as it is for this, to respect Hank even more. He always assumed, based on Hank’s otherwise nonchalant to downright disinterested behaviour, that the man simply couldn’t be rattled. That he was too exhausted of life to care much about how someone else might have lost theirs.

“Connor is a suspect,” Chris says, his voice raised with emphasis on the last word, “Two androids that recently malfunctioned and showed violent behaviour have positively identified him as the cause. If we’re gonna treat android crimes the same as homicide, we have to start now. We can’t simply overlook this just because you’re too close. He is suspect of a having committed a crime. I don’t know what that crime exactly, but this isn’t a coincidence.”

Connor resists the urge to confirm whether anyone without enhanced hearing has picked up any of what Chris said and is now looking at him as a result. He can’t even blame Chris. It’s not personal. He is simply steered by the conviction that Connor shouldn’t be exempt from justice, and usually Connor would have no problem with someone as principled as that. It nevertheless reminds him slightly of what he used to be like himself, before he deviated.

Connor’s focus shifts to Hank, pacing the small room, left to right, before pointing a finger at Chris almost violently, his other hand balled into a fist. It’s an amount of energy he hasn’t displayed since he tried to get out of working with Connor. He was calmer than this right before he went an punched an FBI agent square in the face to buy Connor some time.

“I’ve read the fucking log and so did Jeffrey. You’re rattled and you’re grasping at something you know isn’t hard evidence. What crime? You said it yourself, there is no crime. This is just the moment where you come out as prejudiced, just like everyone else, right when it matters,” Hank barks. “While you were plotting to put Connor behind bars, he quietly marched the witness in for questioning. Does that look like the behaviour of a suspect to you?”

Chris throws his hands in the air in frustration. “I don’t know, maybe he tricked you with all that deviancy business and he’s still following his mission.”

It hits something uncomfortable within Connor.

“I know better!” Hank immediately growls, “He changed, and if you had taken the time, if anyone here had taken the time to look at him properly, they would know it.”

Connor looks at him. He looks and looks, unblinking, unmoving, nearly forgetting to keep his other vital systems running with how much of his CPU he is dedicating to not missing anything of what he’s seeing or hearing. Hank is _mesmerising_.  Something in Connor, previously unclaimed and unexplained, entirely gives way. He knows with a certainty he doesn’t need any statistics for that he would do anything for Hank. Absolutely _anything_. The clarity of this thought startles him. Connor spent the last few days never quite knowing what his synapses were trying to tell him, why it felt so hard to make sense of himself. Right now he knows what he’s feeling, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

_This_ realisation however is overwhelming, both for how entirely mundane the situation is that caused it, and for strongly he feels.

“I’ve seen him all day every day since we closed the last case,” Hank says, much more quiet now. “What you’re saying makes sense, but you’re wrong. He’s going through a lot of stuff right now.” Fowler looks up at him at that, searching. Chris purses his lips at him. “I can’t believe this. I didn’t think I’d actually say this in this lifetime, but Reed was right. You’re straight up standing here telling me you can tell an android’s innocence because you’ve let him in your bed. You sure have changed, Hank.”

Hank grabs a corner of Fowler’s desk before he can grab something – or someone – else. “You looking to get punched?” he grits out, and that, predictably, is when Fowler steps in. “I’d like to know what it is about this android that brings out the worst in all of my officers.” A deep sigh.

“Chris, thank you for your input. From where I stand, right now Hank is right, no matter his… personal relationship with Connor. I will however keep an eye on this, make no mistake.”

Chris looks unhappy, but he seems to know when an argument is over and does as he’s told. When Hank wants to leave the room after him, Fowler calls him back.

“Hank,” he says, softer than Connor has ever heard him, “Does Chris have a point?” Hank looks at him like a deer in headlights, before rubbing a tired hand across his forehead.

“Jesus take me, Jeffrey, are you for real? Do you want to get with the young officers by supplying the rumour mill now?”

Fowler’s voice stays as soft as before, even as he frowns at Hank. “I’m not asking as your superior, I’m asking as your friend.”   
“You haven’t asked me anything as my friend in years now.”  
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I can’t turn back time. There’s a lot of other things I could say, but you’re a grumpy motherfucker who wouldn’t accept any of it. What I can  do is tell you this: I don’t want Chris to be right about this any more than you do.”  
“Oh yeah?” Hank crosses his arms. “And why would that be?”  
“For the sake of your dumb ass, you fucking idiot!”

Hank stays silent, and for a moment they just look at each other. Finally he says: “Look Jeff, I know you put me on desk duty to make a point. To get the FBI off your ass about what happened. If you really want to help me, as my friend, put me on the case. Chris had his chance. This is a capital C case now, a case involving androids, the very thing you partnered Connor and me up for. What good am I if I go on blathering about android human workplace partnership like some fucking door to door salesman but don’t help Connor when it counts? Chris has just admitted he doesn’t trust him. I’ll attend your fucking counselling, I’ll keep checking everyone’s paperwork, I’ll walk your neighbour’s fucking dog if you want me to. Just— _please_. If you can’t help me, then you can take my badge for good and I’ll go and help him anyway.”

Fowler stares at him. “Did you just ask me nicely to do your job?”

“My badge,” Hank repeats, “For _good_.”

Before Fowler can answer, there’s a loud crash from outside.

**

“I love him,” Connor thinks, and he knows it’s true. No sooner has he admitted the thought to himself that he goes down like a lead balloon, startling everyone around him with the crash of his chair. He just lies on his back, unable to do anything else and wrecked with pain. It feels like his entire body is seizing up, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from screaming. A few officers have jumped up, only to helplessly mill about, too scared or uncertain to touch Connor. He know the image he is presenting right now is far from reassuring, but for once Connor is more scared for himself than he is for others. Pain is scary, and pain with no explanation is even scarier.

Eventually he hears footsteps. A shadow passes above him, right before strong hands cradle his head.  
“Focus on me,” Hank says. He’s looking right at Connor, upside down, and even though it’s a weird position to be in, Connor does as he’s told. He focuses on the watery blue of Hank’s eyes. The way his hands feel on his own synthetic skin. He counts Hank’s breaths. His own eyes flutter shut as he endlessly repeats one thought to himself.

**

Connor and Hank stand next to each other in the small room lit by a partially blown out row of lamps above them. After he miraculously stopped seizing, Hank wanted to drive Connor home. Connor refused, wanting to witness Mia Wong’s interrogation. It’s not really an interrogation by any means, neither Chris nor him think her guilty of any crime, but they needed to get her out of her own house for long enough that a separate crew could come in and take her android away.

Not _her_ android, Connor sternly corrects himself, her friend. The friend she was living with. He would be in denial if he didn’t see the parallels. She sits in the interrogation room, ignoring the steaming plastic cup with coffee in front of her. Her eyes are rimmed red. She keeps wiping at them as if to maintain the impression that she’s composed, but she keeps crying, water spilling from her eyes as if she just can’t help herself. Chris sits opposite of her and simply waits for her to start speaking.

“I used to go to the Eden Club,” Mia says, “Not for sex. Just to talk to someone. I know what that sounds like. I just… get lonely sometimes. I moved here for a job, my whole family lives in another state. I don’t really have time to meet people. I just thought hey, people do weirder things with androids behind closed doors. I wanted to know if you could have a conversation with them, too.”

_Them._

“Of course that wasn’t her primary function or whatever.” Mia snorts through her tears. “So the first time was just hella awkward. She kept interrupting me to ask if I was ready to have sex. I don’t know why I came back after that, but I did. I’m in data privacy legislation for the state government, so I know their memory gets wiped regularly. There was no point in coming back. She would just be another Traci, one of thousands for plastic people with the same face. I sought her out again, though. Androids all have to have their model numbers visible in some shape or form. For the lucky ones that means uniforms. For the Eden Club androids, that means tattoos, because we haven’t learned anything from history at all. That’s how I found her and did the same thing over. I did it a few times, because at that point it was just nice to talk at anything vaguely human-shaped. It was better than shouting into the void on social media. One day she turns to me in the middle of “conversation”, looks at me and says “you’re a regular visitor.” There was no way she could have known that, right? Not with the regular memory wipes, but she did. She started learning my name and those of my brothers and my cat, recommended a good place to try soup dumplings at. At first I thought that she was like Google, just saving more and more data about me to be able to say what I wanted to hear, but I don’t think that was it. I _know_ it wasn’t.”

Mia has a stop herself as she starts to sob again.

“Did you know they just threw all of the androids at the club out onto the street half naked a few days ago? I went there and the place was shuttered, androids just sitting in the curb in their underwear. I just put her in my car, took her with me. I could not have left her. I would have taken all of them with me if I could have. The next day I helped her pick a name. Now she’s dead.”

Another pause as Mia folds over on herself with sobs so heavy they seem to cause her physical pain. Chris offers to let her take a moment, but she just starts insistently wiping at her face again. Connor can feel Hank give a long exhale next to him.

“We were just getting used to each other. She asked a ton of questions, like a small child. “Mia why” this and “Mia how” that, all day long. I was so happy to just… see her grow into a person. She developed likes and dislikes within days, tried the most inconsequential things. Hairstyles, clothes, lipstick colours. Oreo ice cream, even though we had to literally open her up and clean out the stupid cookie chunks for hours afterwards. We were on the way home this morning from grocery shopping when it happened. She looked at me with this big, big smile… I’d never seen anything like it from her. I asked her what was going on, and she just said “nothing”, looking all satisfied with herself. At home she started screaming, clawing at herself just as we were getting out of the car. I was trying to get her to stop hurting herself, but she was so frantic she broke my arm. I wanted to restrain her, get help from somewhere, but I didn’t know, I…”  
Mia bursts into tears again, and this time Chris takes mercy on her. She has said enough.

Connor has never seen a human cry like this. Not during an interrogation, not on one of Hank’s TV shows. Mia Wong is crying s if it will kill her, for the sake of an android, no less. Connor realises how useless he would have been if this had been a crucial interrogation – all he knows how to do is to extract information, confessions. He knows how to keep someone from escalating, but he has no idea how to mend a hurt. It’s not what he was made for, say something when there is nothing left to say. His whole plan to shield Hank from any hurt feels ridiculous now, because he has no idea how to actually do it – he can only put himself between Hand and a bullet, as many times as needed. He has no idea if telling Hank that his son’s death was not his fault while he was looking down the barrel of the other’s gun ever reached him, ever did any good. He was simply stating the obvious, but was that actually enough?

As he watches Mia Wong break down over the death of her friend, Connor steps closer to Hank, so close their arms touch from shoulder to wrist. He grabs Hank’s hand. Hank doesn’t move away.


End file.
